Did I Make a Google Webmaster Account Mistake?

Too many similar websites in same account = problems?

[joestern]

I have five domains with pretty different info in the same industry. Two are e-com, one is info, one is a blog, one is a forum. I just bought another site - combo e-com and info. I added that to my Webmaster account.

My question is: am I asking for trouble? Will they realize now that these are all related ownership-wise and have a problem with that?

I really do drink the Google-Aid and believe that they do-the-right-thing/don't-do-evil, but when I added this last domain to my account, I realized that they might not look to kindly on all of this info coming down from one source . . .

[tedster]

I'm not sure what the concern is. There's no reason, and no Google guideline, that says not to develop more than one site in various areas of your expertise. I think you're fine.

[Sally Stitts]

What Ted said.
Perhaps trust rank can accrue.
You are an expert in the (given) industry.
Perhaps it may even bring more authority to your ownership.
Related quality pages, etc. Who knows?

Google is becoming more and more sophisticated, over time.

[edited by: Sally_Stitts at 4:25 am (utc) on Nov. 13, 2006]

[leadegroot]

The only suggestion where multiple sites has been an issue is crosslinking.
The google view seems to be that if these sites all need to cross link so much and they are all yours then they should only be one site.
So, be very cautious of cross linking between your sites - only do it where its really, really appropriate for your user.
If you really want to do them, make it the highest priority for removal should you ever seem to be penalised.

[BigDave]

Odds are that Google already knows they are related, if not by the same owner, by related owners. This way they won't think you are trying to hide anything.

As for cross linking, make sure each of your sites gets the majority of their links from outside your group of sites, and you should be fine.

[kgam]

You will have an issue with cross linking. I raised this issue several weeks ago and have since found a good many webmasters that are experiencing a similar drop in ranks after adding multiple of their sites under one Google Sitemaps account.
[webmasterworld.com ]

If all of your sites are hosted on the same server or you are using the same adsense account on all of them, then google may already know they are owned/controlled by you. Else, you have just told Google that you own/control these sites and they will devalue the links from one to another. As BigDave said, if the majority of your links are from outside your group, this may not have a huge impact, but if you like every little bit of help you can...

[netmeg]

I currently have 61 sites in my Webmaster Central account and I've seen no negative affect on ranking or number of pages in index; if anything, they've all been doing the same or better since I added them. Only a handful of them are crosslinked in any way; most are hosted on our servers. There are no more than three in any one industry, however. YMMV.