Should I Remove sitewide cross-linking? If yes, how?

[AG4Life]

I have this site, let's call it Domain A. It started as a small database for certain products, with pages for each database entry with the product details (it's not an e-commerce site, just a database of information). The database has grown in size considerably, although the site is not very popular (most pages do not rank well).

When Domain A was first launched 6 years ago, I had some sitewide links to my other website, Domain B - the links were related to the content on Domain A. This was added mainly for click-through traffic, but I did not use nofollow as I didn't really know about it back then. The problem now is that instead of a couple of hundred pages on Domain A with links to Domain B, it's now tens of thousands as the database grew in size bit by bit over the years. The linked pages on Domain B has been ranking well, and so I didn't give a second thought about them.

That is until recently, when these linked pages dropped in SERP. Now some other pages on Domain B also dropped in rank, and these did not have sitewide links linking to them.

My question is, should I remove these sitewide links on Domain A, or should I keep them. If I do remove them, will the linked pages on Domain B drop in rank, or will I benefit more from removing these links from low PR pages that may be seen as paid links by Google?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[zehrila]

I wonder why one should remove side wide links given that those links are of same genre and are not spammy.

[skweb]

My understanding is that links that have been there forever need not be removed. Actually if they are sitewide you can continue to add more links. Whatever benefit or harm from these links is already included in rankings.

[Robert Charlton]

AG4Life - There's another current thread that touches on some of same considerations that would be involved in your decision....

Links in header and footer
[webmasterworld.com...]

Google doesn't like too much crosslinking, particularly when it's the main source of inbound linking for your related site(s). So, if site A is pretty much the only source of inbounds to site B, and they sites are related by subject matter and hosting, chances are Google will come around to not liking this arrangement.

I've noticed in the past that when the search terms are not very competitive, this kind of linking has worked on Google. As the web has grown, as competition has increased, and as Google has refined its algorithm, this kind of linking is less likely to be helpful.

Offhand, and this is my personal take on it, the amount of linking you describe sounds excessive. It may be that it's not hurting you, though... it's just not helping as much... in which case removing the links might cause you to drop even further. You might try a few pages as a test.

I doubt that Google is seeing these as paid links... more likely just nepotistic links.

[AG4Life]

Thanks for all the advice. I'll have to have a good think about whether to remove those links or not, maybe test it by removing one link to a page that's not too important.