How to remove interlinking safely

[drall]

I have several sites that engage in heavy interlinking that was in place pre google time frame.

One of the sites interlinks to a friend of mines website. It interlinks on every page and he links back on every page. He has a good site that is a good resource for my users but he is in the process of selling it.

I sort of know the new owners but do not want to be connected to them via my site. I want to remove the sitewide interlinking to stave off any future issues that may occur if the new owners run afoul or if they change the content of the site.

Can anyone give me any advice on how to remove 200,000 outbound links safely? I do not want to trip any filters and have our site penalized or his site penalized.

I can remove some of the links in smaller phases but due to a cms we would still have two large drops in outbound links all at once. Both would be around 50,000 a pop.

Thanks in advance

[tedster]

The links all point to the same address, right?

I can't see 2-way ROS links sending very much link juice in either direction as things stand currently. So I wouldn't have too much concern, even with that big a number. 50,000 at a time or all 200,000 at one time, they both involve changing a lot of pages. That "might" create a bump in the road, but only if trust is already on weak footing.

[drall]

Thanks Tedster, yep same addy.

I wasnt sure because of the volume if this would cause some problem. As far as I know both sites dont have trust issues. One is pr6 and the other is pr 5 and both sites have sitelinks and have been around forever.

They only interlink with the sitename as well, no real anchor text of any value. Thanks again. I will start yanking those links now.