Better to have 5 small sites with different hosts or with 1 host?

Do the bots know if in one account?

[1Lit]

We have 5 small sites. We interlink between the sites. I wanted to ask advice from experts from SEO point of view. Is it better to have the 5 sites on 2 or 3 different webhosts or does it make no difference having them on one host? (Obviously it is a lot cheaper/less admin. to have them with one host in one account.)

Can search engine bots decipher if sites have one owner if they are hosted in one shared hosting account?

If we had them on separate hosts would the interlinking have more value?

Thanks :)

[MarkWolk]

It would be better to spread your risks and the sites over different hosts and with different whois information in each case. Being small sites, it should be easy to find cheap hosting for them; I have 20+ small sites and pay an average of US$1.50 per month for hosting each site. If you wish, PM me and I will refer you to a few cheap, but good hosts.

Obviously that advice applies only provided the sites do not have any duplicate content.

Yes, search engine bots can decipher if sites have one owner if they are hosted in one shared hosting account. Google became recently a registrar probably in order to better understand all these processes.

[martinibuster]

Definitely. I recently saw it happen to someone who wanted to save money on hosting, despite my advice.

[sugarrae]

Yes, deifinitely go with different hosts...

Be careful about taking the advice of using different whois though. Using "non factual" whois could cause you to lose your domain or in the event you lose your access information, be unable to prove it is yours or lose it. Technically, you're not supposed to fake whois data - of course, there are tons of people not following that rule.

[Precious pearls]

Hello friend,

In my opinion, to have links from five different hosts is much more better than having links from one host.

Cheers
P_P