Identical Links pages

Do they get penalised?

[edneil]

I have three different sites. They are all of a similar nature with a small percentage of info replicated but in general they represent three different areas of a broad subject.

The one thing which is virtually identical however is the links page. If I get a reciprocal link I ask them to link to all three sites. I update the links page on one site and copy it to the other two. Is this ok or will it get penalised?

[percentages]

edneil, my advice is change it right now, this very minute.

Google has some kind of link filter to detect link farms, it most definately knows that the links pages are the same across multiple domains and will not like it. Been there, done that, and now have the PR0's on a few sites to prove it!

I'm not sure whether 3 domains will trip the filter, but I know for sure a larger number will.

Either way, change it ASAP before the deep crawl starts, otherwise you could get a kick in the rear next month.

The whole linking thing is becoming so dangerous for Google I am personally considering not allowing Googlebot to spider my link pages. Inktomi, Fast and AV don't give a hoot, but Google seems to be paranoid about reciprocal and cross linking.

As a matter of course I now turn down all requests for reciprocal links, another good reason to stop allowing Googlebot to spider the links pages, turning down good reciprocal link requests hurts the performance in other engines.

This is six of one and half a dozen of the other, Google is currently SE king and as such I can't afford to upset it. But I have to think that it has gone way over the top with its link filter tests.

Best solution seems to be to ban the Googlebot from those pages and only allow the other SE's to see them.

[edneil]

how much will I need to change the links pages?

what percentage needs to be different for it to be o.k?

[percentages]

edneil, the percentage change is a work in progress. I wish I knew the definative answer.;)

I can tell you what will work, or at least what works for me:

Split the links page into smaller parts if possible. Let's say you have 200 outgoing links, make them 4 pages of 50 links each and make sure they are in a totally different order with slightly different anchor text. That seems to convince Googlebot that the pages are different and not part of a link farm.....what a pain!

I believe the smaller number of links per page the safer you are. Of course the amount of maintenance work increases as well!

[Marcia]

Get some diversity between the sites. Link out to quality sites that are on topic, differently from each other for your sites with some not linking back, to diversify the mix. Instead of identical linking with all 3, mix them up a little - do it partially for each.

Not allowing spidering of the links pages permanently will cause your "vote" for the others not to count, and you could end up losing some of the inbounds. And there could be risk with "hogging" Page Rank; in the natural course of things there are links out and in, so keep to a natural pattern as much as possible.

[HuhuFruFru]

i have done this too, but no penalty (only 3 link pages on three different domains) why should it get penalized? it's not crosslinking and it is on-topic.

percentages: did google penalise the whole site or just the links-page?

[edited by: HuhuFruFru at 2:24 pm (utc) on Jan. 3, 2003]

[rogerd]

I agree with Marcia, edneil. Jumbling the links across multiple pages isn't a bad idea, but some link cooperatives have tried that and gotten blasted. It's less likely that your three sites would trigger that kind of action, but nevertheless I'd add a quantity of unique sites to each domain's set of links right away. Also, consider deleting any sites from one or more domains that might be off topic or not particularly useful to your visitors.

[web_india]

edneil, don't do this.

Why don't you instead make some links different like some links on site A which are not part of site B and site C?

It's some additional work but would definitely save you from any potential problems.