similiar pages problem

google penalty still hurting me

[dethfire]

I run about 10 sites. Last summer I cross linked all my sites together. I think google put a penalty on me because traffic to all sites got cut in half. So I took down all my cross linking. My traffic is still terrible so I think the penalties are still active. Something strange I also see is when I do a "similiar pages" action on one of my sites my complete network of others sites show up as similiar pages. That is so odd, they are all of different topics, on different servers and ips. So google must be penalizing me still even those I took down the cross links last summer. Does anyone have any advice?

[Kufu]

The 'Similar Sites' fuction is not what you'd expect it to be. Bascially the sites are 'similar' if they are linked to from the same page. So when you cross-linked your sites they became considered as 'similar'.

You never want to cross link sites that you own, as it creates a mini-network of sites which Google can easily recognize. Maybe a reinclusion request is in order with an explanation that you have removed the crosslinking. Of course you want to make sure that nothing else is wrong with your site before you make the request.

[dethfire]

ok so basicly, google will always associate the sites together no matter how long ago the sites were cross linked?

[CainIV]

You would want to do a reinclusion request to Google. Once Google deems your 'ring' of sites as a network it is up to you to prove to them you have changed your ways, even if it was done unintentionally. If there are any links crossing between sites, on inner pages, I would suggest using 'noindex,nofollow' for now until the penalty is removed.

Also make sure to research that the drop in traffic isn't related to something else. Possibly you have dropped in ranks, etcetc. Things aren't always what they seem.

Good luck.

[travelin cat]

cain is correct. we had the same problem, lots of interlinking between our sites, pr6 became pr0, traffic died. we removed the links and did a reinclusion request with lots of explanations of what happened and why it will never happen again.

after 6 months we are back, not sure if we had a 6 month penalty and the time had come to place us back in the serps or if our reinclusion request had anything to do with it.

the only thing we are sure of is that we were removed because of the interlinking... everything else on our site was white hat and we have over 2,000 in bound links not related to us.

[Miop]

Silly question maybe, but what is actually wrong with a mini-network of sites, providing they are all actually unique in content? In the Real World, most large businesses are part of a parent group which may have a brand image, and even small businesses might have several branches which actually deal with seperate things. Why on the internet would it be considered to be cheating by linking them together, provided it isn't hidden?

[dethfire]

you can artificially inflate PR if you create new sites and link them off a site you have that has great PF

[Kufu]

You can safely create a network by linking the sites to eachother, provided you use the rel="nofollow". This will not pass any PageRank and won't cause Google to think that you are doing the linking to artificially boost PR.