Should I nofollow sitewide links between my sites?

[graeme_p]

I want to put what is effectively an ad for one of my sites on another of my own sites. It will be site wide or at least on most pages (I may exclude the same pages I used to not have Google Ads on when they used to work).

Should I no follow the links? The two sites have common ownership but are not on the same topic.. The site being linked to is my company site so represents the owner of the site the links are coming from. Perhaps I should add schema.org markup to identify the site linked to as the publisher of the site the links are coming from?

I am aiming for clicks on the links, as, despite the different topics, there is (I hope!) an overlap in audience. Any SEO benefit would be a nice bonus though, and I definitely want to avoid SEO harm.

[Wilburforce]

Should I no follow the links?

I'm not sure what sending a signal that Site A doesn't trust Site B would achieve (or what you would intend or expect it to achieve). Google can probably deduce common ownership even if you haven't registered both sites in GSC, so the links would probably be ignored for SEO anyway. Nofollow is probably unneccessary for any effect it might have on Google, if that is your main or only criterion.

I would personally be more concerned about the relevance of the links in their context: if it looks natural to the user, it is unlikely to bother Google: I don't know the subject relationship between the two sites, but I there are not many contexts in which the relevance (from a user's perspective) would be site-wide. Placing them where a user would wish to follow them would probably be more effective than bombarding the user with them, and wouldn't be flagged as anything likely to harm either site.

However, if the relationship is literally that Site B is the publisher of Site A, a site-wide footnote (link + anchor-text) saying something to the effect of "Published by Site B" wouldn't look unnatural.

If Nofollow is used in an attempt to mask unnatural links, it probably won't work. If the links look natural, it probably won't matter.

[ken_b]

In the past I've done a sitewide to another of my own sites by setting up an "ad" in an I-frame.

It's been a while, so I don't know if that's even possible anymore, but it resulted in a single link working as a sitewide link.

[lucy24]

Idle speculation prompted by the above: G### knows everything about everything. Everything on the web, that is. (They’re still working on the rest.) One of those known things is: Of all the links to any given site or individual URL, what proportion of them are nofollowed? Could a nofollowed link in some circumstances be worse than no link at all?

[tangor]

I reserve nofollow for things I REALLY DON'T WANT TO FOLLOW. Otherwise, most of the time it makes no real difference ... g has learned the nofollow game which was the result of giving it importance ...

Code commonsense, link responsibly, and don't worry over much (or try to scam the system, even gently).

[Robert Charlton]

I want to put what is effectively an ad for one of my sites on another of my own sites. It will be site wide or at least on most pages.

graeme_p, many years ago, I had a setup similar to what you're describing. At some point, the recipient site more or less disappeared from Google. Ultimately, I nofollowed the link and that fixed it.

This doesn't mean, though, that all sites in this situation would behave this way. These were brother and sister type sites, and throughout their history they'd been promoted together, shared many link sources, and had hosting in common. I think that if they had more diverse backlink profiles in general, this wouldn't have been an issue.

That said, I've never been inclined to repeat the experiment. It's much simpler and safer just to nofollow. Many tell me this is being overly cautious and point to counterexamples, but invariably, when I've checked, the counterexamples have all had rich link profiles.

[graeme_p]

I was thinking in terms of something like "published by" but a lot more prominent than a footer link.

Google at one level know there is some connection because they are both in Google Search Console as owned by me. Whether or how they use this info I do not know.

The linking site has a rich link profile, and has been up for over a decade. The site linked to is new and has very few links.

My instinct is pretty much what @tangor says, which i think in the circumstances means do not no follow. I am inclined to try and see what happens.

Thanks for all the helpful answers.

[Robert Charlton]

My emphasis...

The linking site has a rich link profile, and has been up for over a decade. The site linked to is new and has very few links.

In my experience, that's the situation with the problem. IMO, you've got to keep in mind that you're dealing with a machine, which is constantly evolving, and which has demonstrated that it's capable of misinterpretating things. As you say, you don't know.

Code commonsense, link responsibly....

Etc. Sounds almost altruistic... but is this linking responsibly or rationalizing the situation? I still believe that some basic principles in Google's Historical Data Patent were and still are implemented, and coordinated actions are one of the things they don't like.

If they saw the new site rapidly gaining freely-given editorial links from completely independent sources, they might overlook an initial seed link. If the don't see that, I think they'd assume opportunistic linking.

Truly... I don't know either, but I could make a good argument for not linking, using the same set of facts that you're using to justify the link.

PS: IMO, sitewide links in particular are going to be the ones that set off bells.

[sunjun]

I would appreciate nofollow,with ad nofollow ,you may improve your trust,no harm or potential danger to your website

[graeme_p]

Just to say I have decided not to nofollow and take the risk as neither site is terribly valuable as things stand so I can take a risk and nofollowing links to my own site just seems wrong.