Position Drop from link building on partner site?

[danbot]

I have a .com.au site which had a significant drop in google search positioning around 3 weeks ago. I've been trying to make some sense of why and noticed something quite odd. This drop in position within google seems to have happened almost simultaneously with a drop in yahoo positions as well.

This leads me to beleive that perhaps this is more than just a glitch or a re-sorting of the index or something. But I haven't actually changed anything on this site for at least the last two months.

However, I have another site with the same name but .co.uk. This site, being part of a group in the same brand, has sitewide linking to and from the .com.au site.

I have been doing link building on over the past few months on the .co.uk site, resulting in major fluctuations in inbound and outbound links. I am wondering if this might potentially be the source of my sudden position drop?

Note that since beginning the link building, the position of the .co.uk site has actually improved.

[edited by: tedster at 5:24 am (utc) on Feb. 17, 2009]

[tedster]

I don't quite see why you suspect link building that helps one site would cause a site it links to to go down. Can you explain a bit more how that would work?

Also, since you mention fluctuations in both inbound and outbound links, does that mean you have been doing a reciprocal linking campaign?

[danbot]

sorry.. yes i forgot to mention that it was reciprocal link building.

I figured that since the two sites were so interlinked with each having sitewide links to the other, then changes to one may effect the other.
For the site which has dropped, the partner site make up the majority of inbound links.

[danbot]

Am i right to think it is odd for google and yahoo to drop my positions almost simultaneously? or is this common?

[tedster]

Well, seeing both engines drop you at the same time can mean that they both picked up on something new and problematic that changed for your site.

I can tell you that reciprocal linking has a limit in terms of ranking boost and you may well have run into it. That doesn't mean that you should turn down reciprocal links, but more that you should be focusing on links that offer traffic rather than thinking of further ranking benefits