Does Google frown on several niche sites from same business?

[scooterdude]

Hi All

just trying to make sense of the catastrophe thats my little network of niche sites.

Some info

. I am primarily into application development rather than SEO, and all SEO has either being designed in or low key like directory submission when that was smiled upon by our Great leader/overload :)

. All niche sites provide a service that was previously smiled upon by the great G, infact there are still a few titans out there, for me it was an interesting tech challenge to see if i could match these sites for functionality, done now, a bit late, 2.5 years effort.

.Most sites could be combined into fewer sites, except that some widgets are traditionally marketed under a separate unbrella by most folk.

.They where starting to do okay as focussed niche sites, till the last set of emd/panda/penguin/500/y update saga coincided with server meltdown for me, sites o/s for up to 7 days apiece, now they quite dead, Google and bing both, so I dunno whether G simply algoed my sites, or the chaos triggered a length cool-down/penalty period

.emd ad other G ranking updates do appear to marginalize tight niche sites

At this time , I am planning to just combine the majority into about 5, place them in cheap but decent hosting, and move on to other projects

Justing sounding out folks opinions on the Googles intentions

[Crush]

google will not rank similar content or domains on the same IP for the same SERP, so form that you can work out that google really do not like it.

But who cares what google likes, just make them look different and use different IP's.

[nomis5]

google will not rank similar content or domains on the same IP for the same SERP

Interesting, do you have any hard evidence of that?

[Nostalgic Dave]

I've got two sites in the same niche, one is tightly focused on a specific model of vintage widget, while the other covers a variety of vintage widgets. Both sites on the same server under same IP, and they often rank together for the same search terms.

[scooterdude]

Sites are in different niches, and have different widget content, was carefull to ensure that there is no overlap

However, they're all on the same cms and template which I cannot change as they would then become unmanageable

I just remember from years back, the prevailing attitude evident in dmoz,Google,guru utterances was that it would be hard to accept that anyone could handle more than a single site properly, that seemed to have softened with the coming of tight niche sites,

YET:
I use cctlds targeted at 2 main markets
Before the current devastation, I went through a period where cctld1 for a niche would prosper in Google SERPS for a few months while cctld2 tank to nothing, then it would switch round.

Then it became one site at a time for any niche prosper for a while, then tank as another site another niche began to rank .

The sites are very easy t identify as no attempt has been made to hide their common ownership, and they all carry a definitive statement of ownership.

It all makes little sense to me as even at their highest traffic levels, the traffic involved would be peanuts circa 70 uniques per day. Target sites for this type of services would probably do up to 10,000 uniques per day.

[jimbeetle]

Different sites, different niches, different content. Why would Google or any other search engine care that they have the same owner?

Unless they're heavily interlinked and don't have solid enough independent backlink profiles.

[Pjman]

Why would Google or any other search engine care that they have the same owner?

I would say to not allow any one being to gain too much control of an audience.

I believe they do throttle owners of content that use multiple sites in the same niche.

[Rasputin]

google will not rank similar content or domains on the same IP for the same SERP

I don't know if this applies in some circumstances but I have conclusive evidence that this is not always the case - two different sites, same IP, same SERP, I can see both on page 1 of the serps right now (not personal search)

scooterdude, my experience is that sites that are not actively worked on just drift into oblivion, especially sites already affected by panda, emd etc, so I think that whether you combine them or not will make no difference unless you also take active steps to 'improve' them (in google terms).

[coachm]

I believe they do account wide (owner wide) assessments. So, Yes, I believe it matters. Certainly seen an across the board (all sites) hit this week. The only way this can be explained is an owner wide process.

It's dumb. But then it's about Google being overly concerned with keeping spam stuff out, rather than being concerned with ensuring good stuff is prominent. (You have to think about this carefully, because the meaning is subtle).

We have sites on different, but related topics, to make it easier for our visitors to find what they need, and no more if they wish, or to look at the related topics, if they choose.

Guess what? The sites are interlinked somewhat.
It's the only way to present the related content without duplicating it on various niche sites. So, my bet is we keep getting hit.

[scooterdude]

Spot on, I have hardly promoted them and they've been interlinked to share traffic , which actually happens when ever one of them has traffic

Unless they're heavily interlinked and don't have solid enough independent backlink profiles.

So is this a case where the interlinking has to go to make the Search engines happy?

I would have been resistant to the idea except that the most consistent of the lot is also the only one not interlinked, sad really

[Leosghost]

re the OQ..IME ..No..

with the same "caveats" as were mentioned by jimbeetle..

[Hoople]

google will not rank similar content or domains on the same IP for the same SERP

Interesting, do you have any hard evidence of that?

In my one micro niche I have 4 sites all on the same IP. These sites' niche is 3 tiers down from the primary niche's (the vertical) top. All rank well in Google and in Bing for their primary keywords. Three are EMD's for their primary keywords.

All are not for profit, nothing commercial at all on site, no text links, no link networks and no ads at all. Most have >500 words on the homepage with less than 5 images. All but one are single page single purpose sites. All have a Wordpress blog as well. How small is micro? All get less than 10,000 visitors a year. All are interlinked to each other and have many outbound links. All are in Google Webmaster Tools/Google Analytics too. Been ranking like this and improving (me building inbound links) since 2009.

[moxie]

A while back (about 5 months ago) I had 4 sites all in the same broad niche (highly competitive), but ranking for different terms, all on the same IP. None of those sites were interlinked at all, and ranking very well. I just got overwhelmed by the lack of sleep I was getting with being responsible for developing all sites in every way, so I ended up letting go of 3* out of the 4 and stuck with focusing on the real moneymaker. All sites had been online for about 3 years.

_{*The stress really started to take its toll. Honestly, I have no idea why I thought that I could handle all that responsibility indefinitely (on top of being responsible for other things), ugh.}