How does Google like addon domains

[fyrehawg]

ive read several articles and have seen mixed opinions on this subject. I have a website is basicaly a news portal displaying rss feeds and forums etc for a theme in one local geographic area. I then purchased and set up hosting on another domain which is the same type of site but covering another local area. I then went on and registered 4 more domains and added 4 addon domains to the second account to help keep organized and easier to maintain.

All 6 sites will be a seperate local area with their own domain. Five of these will be hosted on the same server. I wanted to interlink all of these (6) sites together and basicaly have a portal to all related news and discussion. So basically I have 6 websites, 2 hosting accounts, 6 domains..five of which point to the same server. They all share one commen template and although they look the same ( besides the logos ) they will have different feeds and forums for each.

How will google handle this if I have a drop down menu in my main navigation with a link to each? Will this hurt me in google ranking?

[edited by: tedster at 4:24 pm (utc) on Dec. 25, 2008]

[tedster]

If you're just adding navigation links for your users convenience, this set up shouldn't hurt you. It probably won't help, either. Each domain will need to attract its own healthy and diverse backlink profile in order to rank well.

[fyrehawg]

Thanks for the advice..I just wanted to be sure I wasnt making some huge fatal mistake by doing this.