Should I have divided my site into several?

Multiple URLs verus one

[AvalonJean]

I thought it might make it easier for my readers to find what they like if I divided my site into several- so widgets.com would be linked to soft-widgets.com, hard-widgets.com, medium-widgets.com, and each site would have the info about that aspect of the topic. Widgets.com would have articles covering the entire topic, and lots of brief dscriptions of articles with links to the sub-urls.

Reading this forum, I am worried- will this get me banned from Google? I publish a lot of new original content every week, but am worried that by having a bit of the content on the main URL and the body on the subURL I might be considered as doing something undesirable by Google.

Suggestions would ease my worries - thanks :)

[creative craig]

Are all the sites heavily cross linked to each other?

Is there a chance any of it could be seen as duplicate content?

[AvalonJean]

Yes the sites are heavily crosslinked and yes there could be some duplication of text, I have the first para of each article on widgets.com and the complete article on sub0widgets.com.

[oLeon]

did you read this thread [webmasterworld.com]? itīs a good step in the topic of crosslinking. if you have duplicated content, and if you have heavily crosslinked - yes, that could be cause big problems.

read the thread about crosslinking. after that, you may the dos and the donīts

[AvalonJean]

Thanks much, that thread is wonderfully informative.

[skibum]

I'd split em' up if it would seem natural to break out different topics on different sites, but if it requires a lot of cross linking between many pages on each site, it sounds like the info would be best presented on one top notch site.