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If the page is grey, then it's either been banned or not spidered yet.
I think penalties might appear for a white bar sometimes too, im not sure. Maybe the forum library mentions it :)
Since you say the sites are new, id reckon its because they have no PR yet.
Remedy > Get links pointing to it :)
This is important, because our company has 5 different sites but we use .htaccess and subdirectories to separate each site, not sure if cross-linking these sites with 1 IP would be construed as a link farm...
if you have 5 separate sites on the same IP, all unique content, etc.. but part of your network and you cross-link them together on a links page, will google blacklist you?
I'd say it has more to do with the manner in which you link them and what the related content is about rather than them all being on the same IP/server.
If you leave things how they are, you'll find out.
HOW you link things
Pretty much, because it follows them. Google will also be able to map all these links together so can pretty much see the big picture, through your site or a collection of sites id imagine.
im not a google engineer so i could never say for sure if your five domains are running a risk.
in the case of "how you link", im sure the gbot would prefer it if the content was all related :)
I'd keep an eye on how many links you place toward each site though.
If you listed all your external URL's on each of the 5 sites and the other 4 are a majority of the links then you can see why a penalty wouldnt go amiss....
Just try keep the balance between linking to your own and linking to others.
"Naturally" there should be no bias! :)