Crosslinking and link count

[galaga]

I run a search on my main keyword and this site comes in first. Then I run a link: search to see who links to him. Guess what- he's got 366 inbound links and about 90% of them are from different pages on the same site. A Who Is revaels that both sites are operated by the same guy. I think this is clearly spam. Am I right?

[heini]

Not neccessarily. First of all: what makes you think the owner did even try to spam any search engine? He might as well just have built his sites and interlinked them naturally.
Believe it or not, but I have a site on a topic, to which I built a sister site to carry lots related info, which didn't fit in the format of the firt site. Sure as hell I interlinked both of them. And yes, I promoted both of them moderately.
Spam? I'd been offended, if anybody had called me out for spamming.
Today, with Google defining the way many not so experienced webmasters think about spam or not, I would not do that anymore. Sad, isn't it?

To answer your question directly: Not in my book.

[galaga]

heini-

Thanks for your opinion. Fair enough.

[AthlonInside]

You can't say he is spamming, maybe he don't even know what is Google! LOL.

Not all people build their web site for search engine. But I think all webmasterworld members are :) but we are only a minority group as compare to the large community of the web.

[rfgdxm1]

I'm with heini here. I have 2 info sites on related topics, and I do interlink them with a link to the other on the home page. Does the fact I have the temerity to run 2 sites on 2 domains make me a spammer? I'd sure as hell hope that the definition of being a "spammer" isn't a webmaster who owns 2 domains. I wasn't even thinking about search engines when I started the second domain. Sure, if someone has dozens of domain for the sole purpose of dominating SERPs that is spam. However, I sure as hell hope that Google doesn't consider just 2 excessive.

[Powdork]

Spam or not, Google shouldn't give someone the benefit of 666 X .9 links from one domain. Its just too many.