Cross linking multiple domains

Is it ok with google?

[vik_c]

Say I have five different web sites, selling blue widgets, green widgets, red widgets, yellow widgets and pink widgets. I have links to the homepage of all five sites from every single page across the five domains. Now all five are PR0. I'm wondering if this is because they're new or because Google has seen red. They have no incoming links indexed yet because they're very recent. All pages are indexed by google already but I'm getting no traffic at all thanks to the PR0.

Do you think my domains have been penalised? Should I remove the cross links? Other people seem to do it in the same industry. Could someone guide me.

Thanks!

[rogerd]

Vic, this sounds like a classic cross-linking situation. No external links, and lots of cross-links. Remove all or almost all cross links, and work on getting "real" links.

Your PR0 could be a penalty, or it could be the sites are just too new and have no linkage. You'll know once you get better linkage and go through an update or two.

[vik_c]

Yeah, I guess I should wait for this update to see if I get some PR.

[mrguy]

If your cross linking every single page to the home page of each site, your asking for trouble.

Why is it necessary to crosslink every single page to the home page of each page. Wouldn't one link do?

This is classic crosslinking and deserves to be a PRO.

Why don't we all build 5 or 6 sites and then crosslink them all to inflate our PR?

Because Google doesn't like it and will PRO them thats why.

[Process]

Is there conclusive evidence of crosslinking multiple domains being good or bad.

On a similar note, we are thinking of registering country specific sites, with minimal changes to reflect the country.

Our competitors seems to be doing it and we see multiple similar listings from these multiple domains appearing in the serps!

[vik_c]

Well, since all domains sell widgets, its just a convenience to be able to visit any of the five main pages in just one click but it seems it's reason to get penalised. Time to clean up! :)

[tigger]

>Time to clean up!

I wish you luck I had a similar problem last year (Aug) dropped from PR6 to zero, cleaned up the sites and dropped Google quite a few emails with no result, so I started with a new URL (Jan) and I'm now back to where I was before, but with no cross linking

[buzzmaster]

What if you've got 2 sites. One markets regional widgets and one is nationwide.

The one that markets regionally actually ranks higher than the one that markets nationwide and therefore gets lots of clicks from visitors outside the region.

What if I include a one-way link from each page of the regional site to the home page of the site that markets nationally. Sort of like "for widgets outside our market check xxx".

This would not be reciprocal or cross-link because the site that markets nationally would be capable of handling all requests and therefore wouldn't have a reason to send traffic elsewhere.

The purpose for including these links would be two-fold:
1) It would assist our visitors and drive traffic.
2) It would also help the nationwide site with themed links to gain higher PR (or whatever the non-google engines call 'credibility').

I've been doing this with javascript links on the sub-pages so that I wouldn't be penalized by google. I've noticed that visitors do in fact click from the regional site to the nationwide site from all pages of the regional one. Would it be ok to remove the javascript and use standard html links? It seems a little paranoid because this is something done for the visitors and not designed simply to inflate PR.

I saw one of my competitors doing something like what I'm considering. They have an existing site and it is the only link into their new site (from each page). The new site carries the same PR5 as the original site with no other external links.