Penalty for linking to non-related site?

[zorafex]

I have a computer site right now, but I also have a new biking site. Would I be penalized if I linked to the bike site from all of my pages on my computer site?

[Bobby]

Your bike site may not receive any boost from the link but it certainly shouldn't hurt your computer site at all.

[synergy]

Ask yourself this:

Do you think people coming to your site looking for computers will be interested in bikes?

My guess is that you answered no this question. This trick used to work.. linking a site about computers to a site about bikes and the bike site getting mucho credit for it. No more. Every single outgoing link you have on your site accounts for what your site is about. By doing this, all you will accomplish is ruining the theme of your computer site and giving the bike site an irrelevant backlink which will pretty much count for nothing.

My suggestion is not to do it.

[caveman]

Do people who use computers ride bikes? Do bike riders use computers? Just thinking out loud.

:-)

[kamikaze Optimizer]

Do you think people coming to your site looking for computers will be interested in bikes?

Do you think people paying for links give a sh#'
whatever their interests are ;)..go for it but don't abuse interlinking

[FleaPit]

It's a link what's wrong with that? Sometimes it pays not to deconstruct everything...

[1milehgh80210]

I think a lot of times people give the G algo credit for many abilities it just does'nt have.

[superpower]

Maybe the biking site will get spidered faster and show up in the serps faster if he links from the already established computer site, which the bots may visit more regularly.

Works for me all the time :)

[nileshkurhade]

1milehgh80210

I think a lot of times people give the G algo credit for many abilities it just does'nt have.

Bingo. Well said.

[steveb]

"Would I be penalized if I linked to the bike site from all of my pages on my computer site?"

No.

Linking every page of both domains to every page of the other domain probably is not wise, but there is nothing wrong from one domain to another.

[FleaPit]

Have you noticed how so many people say don't do this or I wouldn't do that because you will PROBABLY get this penalty or earn yourself a grey bar. Even better, you got banned because you did this that and the other because well, its just wrong, wrong, wrong and G doesn't like it and, and, and well bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla...

[AjiNIMC]

I donot know what to say as I am internet marketing guy,

1) people buying diphers use to buy beer at the same time.
2) Computer and bikes both are very related , youth segment, If I own a computer, I might dream about a bike too.

So , I donot know whether big G will appreciated such association as technolgy is limited by human intellegence. But each page to each page doesn't make sense. My advice is
1) Commit the mistake and learn
or
2) Wait someone to commit it and then do the right

I am waiting for your conclusion, do remember me after you learn it. Also lets discuss what is linking penalty assosiated with.

Regards
Aji

[Yidaki]

You could make a page (or more) about bike computers and link that to/from the bike site ... i'd say if you carefully research the thing, you likely will find some crossings between the two topics.

[nileshkurhade]

If you guys are talking about PR calculation then its OK - if you link a site with low PR you may lose some rank. But penalty becuase you linked a unrelated site has to be a manual penalty.

[Yidaki]

>If you guys are talking about

I was talking about establishing links that make sense to your visitors and don't dilute your sites' themes.

[nileshkurhade]

don't dilute your sites' themes.

Makes perfect sense. Although you can link to any site you want (make sure it dosent have a manual penalty by Google) linking to unnessary sites will dilute the your content. This is the precise reason why I stopped Link Exchange. Google started referring me people who were searching for something not related to my site, and got to my site only becuase there was a link that i exchanged.

[glengara]

Being cautious, I'd have a single link at the bottom of the computer home page to the bike homepage with something like " My other site has nothing to do with computers, it's about bikes".
It would at least give some explanation to the apparent irrelevancy of the link.

[nileshkurhade]

How dose Google know Computer and Bike are totally unrelated -

1) There can and is computer bike game
2) They can be building a bike that has a computer on it somewhere in Japan or right in your home town.

[AjiNIMC]

Nice thought, but remember that technolgy has limits, they go for 80-20 rule. Sometimes they do 20% wrong to justify the other 80%.

Put yourself in Gs chair and think how will you stop spams(link exchange to boost your ranking is a SEO tactic not an ethical thing in this unethical world). You might do some updates which can hurt many like me but cannt cry for being competitive, will fight with another startegy.

A continuos fight..........

Aji

[FleaPit]

Come on now this is getting silly, a link is a link, no need to explain anything. I can't see Googlebot coming along and going "Hmmm, this link isn't relevant to this page soooo, actually so what... and he did leave a nice little note saying why its here." Let's get sensible, people are used to seeing all sorts of things on web pages related to a common theme or being totally eclectic. If they are not interested in the link then they won't click, if they are they will, its that simple. I think people forget how interesting a place the internet is where a simple link can muster an unlikely curiosity in new information. Oh yeh, it's called surfing!

[nileshkurhade]

All links are crawled first and ranking is calculated later then filters are applied. Manual penalties are placed last. If there is a manual penalty the page may not be crawled next time.

[AjiNIMC]

FleaPit,

Surfing is different and getting to Top rank is different, it is business. Here

Customer or Content is the king

Thats ok a discussion is to make it a better world from every aspect.

Aji

[FleaPit]

We keep hearing content is king, links are also content so no problem there then. I don't bother with WebmasterWorld too much these days apart from skimming because there is so much conjecture based on so little if any fact. Need to forget about the little things and get on with more important things. It's sad to see so many people worried about such insignificant things when they still end up getting tossed out with the bath water for being totally "white hat". You never know, you may actually get people clicking through the bike link just because... it happens all the time.

[Palehorse]

Find a product to carry your computer safely on a bike, then link the bike page off that page.

:)

[AjiNIMC]

some people getting hyper, yeah I complety agreed you cannt fix a door for your customer, open all the doors for them.

Be careful too much doors can create a havoc, so choose few but good ones.

Aji

[ronin]

Google is not going to start penalising pages which have outbound links to pages on a different topic. It may withhold credit, but it won't penalise. There are a million ways that bikes and computers are related: sport, youth market, green issues, old guy in a small village in Tibet who runs an internet cafe and rents out mountain bikes, streetlife in Amsterdam, watching a Tour de France livecast etc.

[FleaPit]

For those who may not fully understand...

WebmasterWorld Glossary:

"SEO" - A new religion.
"Google" - God
"GoogleGuy" - God's Double Agent
"Serps" - The Matrix
"May" - e.g 'this may happen...' aka 'No idea really, but hey why not.'
"Might" - e.g 'this might happen...' aka 'Think I read it somewhere so I'll pass it on.'
"Penalty" - After a foul in the box you get to take a penalty, hmm... that's football actually. Oh yeah, if you do x,y or z on your site then you "May" get sucked up by a black hole.
"Spam" - Anything above your site in the serps because quite frankly they are better than you so must be spam.
"White Hat" - Nah, nah it wunt me guv, I'm kosher! Try 'im over there with the "Black Hat", he spams the serps, I only massage 'em (wink wink).
"Black Hat" - Did I do that!? Really, was that wrong of me? Oh dear I'm sorry I just didn't know... hmm, yeh, I did keep reading about it all the time but it never really crossed my mind... oh well, thanks anyway.
"Google Dance" - Monthly religous ritual which often involves being plugged into the Matrix for inordinate amounts of time.
"Florida" - Akin to a 'foot & mouth' cull i.e. One of you has got but we can't be sure who... hmmm, Bob go and get the machine gun.

[1milehgh80210]

concerned citizens can put up a bikes page on their computer page ("my other passion,blah,blah")
Now your site is about bikes too,lol.
I see plenty of multisubject sites doing just fine in serps.

[AjiNIMC]

pretty well said FleaPit

[kamikaze Optimizer]

don't dilute your sites' themes.

lol

Google must be the perfect intelligence , it needs keep up with 10 zillion web pages, keep account of keyword density blah blah blah.
Don't know how the NYT or Nassa copes, they have loads of "off theme" links, but they do ok in the serps.
Googlebot is less than a low-life amoeba, not that smart. It can find "widget" however