Cross-Linking

Bad or not?

[SlyOldDog]

This topic comes up from time to time so I just thought I'd air it again.

Let's say I was webmaster for the Hard Rock Cafe and I built a page for each cafe around the world. Of course I could put them all in one domain and be done with it. But a strategy that works right now is to make a different domain for each location and link them all together. I don't really know why it works (theory says Google should be indifferent), but the evidence is there. Cross-linked domains do better than single URLs with a lot of content.

Google seems to have a hard time penalizing these and even after acting on a spam report (talkinf first hand here) refused to take all the domains down after an engineer checked things out.

So what do you think? Is it worth the risk? Is there any risk at all? Does Google care?

[BigDave]

If you are the webmaster that decides to do this for google, and not for your users, please don't complain if you do get nailed at some point because of it. Even if they are all legitimate sites.

Does it work now? Probably. And it will probably work for the near future. But if it stops working at some point, or if it even draws a penalty, then I would rather not read a thread about how awful google is, when it is you that is doing the gambling. You did, after all, say that you are doing this to improve your ranking.

In the case of the specific example you mention, it is definitely not worth the risk to the main site of a heavily branded company. It might be worth playing that game with some other sites, but not your billion dollar+ brand name site.

[killroy]

So if I say I'll do the exact same thing, but I'm doing it for my users instead of google. That would make it alright?

I don't agree. Cross-linking in this situation is perfectly logical and has been done for prefectly legitimate usability reasons long before google sat on the pie.

Fer cryin' out laud what is the net if not a bunch of cross-linked domains.

This witch hunt of perfectly legitimate web methodologies has to stop. We have to stop beeing afraid of Google and get back to doign our sites for our visitors. It's google that has to change to accomodate our sites, NOT the other way round.

That goes for duplicate domain, complex URLs, sessions and the lot.

Just my 2cents.

SN

[Go60Guy]

Not employing seo techniques that work because at some time in the future, Google might (stress might) change its algo seems unproductive.

We do, indeed, get a lot of "the sky is falling" sorts of warnings in these forums. Seems to me that we should focus more on what works now, rather on what possibly might find disfavor in the future.

Those who follow these boards always seem to adapt when changes take place.

That said, linking issues always seem to engender confusion, and there isn't any good compendium here at WebmasterWorld or elsewhere as to what the limits are regarding cross linking and linking in general.

Google, is very specific in its guidelines for webmasters concerning what techniques are not recommended.

Has anyone ever posted here that they were banned or sent into Google purgatory for "excessive cross-linking"? I've seen it duscussed a lot, but only speculation as to its consequences. If anyone knows differently, please share it.

[BigDave]

It's google that has to change to accomodate our sites, NOT the other way round.

No, google needs to accomdate their users, not our sites. Just as we are supposed to do things for our users and not for google.

I have what is actually a very unique site. If I was to block Googlebot, google's users would lose a valuable resource, but it is not valuable enough to cause any defections from Google. I therefore can't hurt google by witholding my site from them.

Google on the other hand can set standards for what they will include on their site, and since I NEED those Google referrals, I have to accomodate google's requirements to be listed.

Now Google's requirements to be listed really aren't all that tough to deal with. The requirements are the same whether or not you are doing it "just for google", but the vast majority of people that get caught in the web were doing it for the search engine, and not for their users.

Do what you want with your site, just understand that Google has the exact same right.

If you go back to the original post, SOD ended with "So what do you think? Is it worth the risk? Is there any risk at all? Does Google care?". Do you notice that word "risk" in there? It means that he realizes that there is risk in what he is doing. If you decided to take a risk, then you also need to take responsibility for that risk.

[BigDave]

Go60Guy,

From what I can tell, whenever someone claims to have gotten in trouble for cross-linking, GoogleGuy has always pointed out other things that they have done to cause the problem. Usually duplicate content.

That is where I think the real danger is. If you are doing it in a blatant way to try and boost your rankings it will look bad during a manual check of your site. And if you are pushing reasonable limits with your cross linking, there are probably several other red flags that will be raised.

Let's face it, there is Good SEO, Bad SEO and SEO that walks the line. Too many people assume right away that the Good SEO can't possibly be as effective as the others so they just skip it. I just do not understand why that is, because even if you do eventually have to get into that grey area, it is stupid to ignore the stuff that is perfectly safe. And if you are paying attention to what is perfectly safe, I would have to wonder how you would even have that much time to be messing around with the grey areas.

[SlyOldDog]

BigDave. It was just a what-if scenario. I'm not really the webmaster for the Hard Rock Cafe ;)))

>>It means that he realizes that there is risk in what he is doing.

Did I say I do it?

Anyway, who cares if I do or not? My question is "What is the risk"?

If you can quantify that risk and the return, it's easy to know what to invest in your backup plan. Risky rewards are worth more than safe returns, so long as risk adjusted return is higher.

I'm interested in hearing from webmasters who believe they were or were not banned for cross-linking. What do you think did/didn't get you banned?

[killroy]

I crosslinked some large sites >60000 pages around 3 years ago, LONG before the whole debate ever started, and at a time when google was still spamable by simple means such as hidden texts.

In hte meanwhile I've somewhat succumbed to the terror mongering of some supposedly experienced people, and have scaled done on some prime real estate. But I have never, even in the slightest seen any negative side effects in any part. Quite the oposite, I usually experienced favourable rankings, PR boosts and even visitor traffic along the cross links.

I have much evidence to support it, no evidence to the deterrent of cross-linking, and if I'm honest, no evidence this will ever change, nor that it would make sense for google if it would change.

SN

[guynouk]

SlyOldDog
We had a large number of sites zeroed in Oct last year for crosslinking on the same or very similar servers.
We did it in an attempt to boost our page rank but it failed miserably. The sites in question although designed differently did have some content that was similar, they also had very few or no links from anywhere else.
I see sites now that are virtual copies of each other, they crosslink, are hosted on the same server buy all have good page rank. How do they get away with it? These sites do however have decent links from other non similar sites which I feel saves them from a penalty.
We've since learnt our lesson and have implemented measures to rectify our earlier mistakes.

[edited by: guynouk at 11:27 pm (utc) on Sep. 7, 2003]

[1milehgh80210]

I would think if google tried to guess the motivation for every link (same owner or admin.,reciprocal, paid -PR-. paid -adv.-,etc.)they'll be wading into some deep water.
But I guess anything done to the extreme could cause some problems..