Crosslinking sites

[keepclear]

I have a number of sites all on the same topic, last month was doing great in google eg on one - 13k vistors from G, this month 300 so far!
This month G visitors are down on all of them - do you think this is because of linking them all together - surely this is legitimate of theyre all on the same topic?

If I remove the links, any idea on how long to get rankings back?

[Rob_Cook]

What's the hosting situation? Do they share the same/similar IP?

[Bewenched]

Do the SE's really put that much relevance on similar IP's .. I mean what if you are in a virtual hosted environment with say a pr0n site and have no idea.. could it hurt you?

[Whitey]

This is a good question, but begs a lot more questions to assess whether or not you are vulnerable to issues that will cause you to be tripped in the Google algo and/or if this strategy would be beneficial.

Here's my checklist of questions [ others may have more ]

-Are they on the same C Block?
-How many are on the same C Block?
-Is the theme of the sites on the same C Block the same or different?
-Do they have the same ownership [ Whois]?
-Do they have same regional extensions [ ie .COM ; .CO.UK ; .CA etc ]?
-Is the content between the sites the same or different?
-Is the content unique?
-Do the links deep link or are they to one page?
-Is the link text varied?

I don't have the answers, but some better people than me may join in and have a few words when there's some more detail to support an analytical answer. Some of this smacks of potential duplicate content issues, so you may want to be careful. The other issue is, Google would want to be convinced that there are legitimate reasons why you interlink your sites.

Some questions that I have:

Does Google treat interlinking sites the same or differently than internal linking, if they are on the same C block, different content , and same ownership?

Matt [ Cutts ] says on one of his recent videos, that a large number of same themed sites on one C Block create suspicions of SPAM. But he didn't reveal the threshold of tolerance for this.

I haven't worked out if when Matt rolls his eyes back [ thankfully video has arrived ] if that means Matt doesn't know, he's deeply thinking or something else. [ Forgive me Matt! ]

[keepclear]

-Are they on the same C Block?
Yes

-How many are on the same C Block?
Yes

-Is the theme of the sites on the same C Block the same or different?
The same

-Do they have the same ownership [ Whois]?
Yes

-Do they have same regional extensions [ ie .COM ; .CO.UK ; .CA etc ]?
Yes - .com

-Is the content between the sites the same or different?
Mostly different - two of the sites share the same script.

-Is the content unique?
Yes

-Do the links deep link or are they to one page?
All to the homepages

-Is the link text varied?
Yes.

[Halfdeck]

If they're all on the same theme, why not just put them all under the same domain?

[Alex70]

What exactley mean by crosslinking:
every page of every web site is corsslinked or your index are crosslinked?

[keepclear]

Halfdeck - because they are separate sites - If I combined them all I would lose income?!

Alex70 - They are all linked to each other in the nav bar down the side.

[randle]

When it comes to optimizing web sites, it’s the Google algorithm most people tend to focus on. However, when it comes to tripping filters for linking, unfortunately Yahoo sets the bar extremely low there. You will trip a filter and get the death penalty in Yahoo long before you get into trouble with Google with the above described scenario. Google can be fairly forgiving with these things, and if you do get into trouble, often you sink down in rankings as opposed to being permanently banned.

With that said, IMHO you’re crossing a line with what you’re doing.

Particularly here;

They are all linked to each other in the nav bar down the side.

A nice text link here or there, when relevant, is a different story than what you have.

Bear in mind there’s not a big difference between just prior to the line, and just over it.