If you run multiple blogs on topics ranging from shoes to iPods to food, think twice before you cross-link those unrelated sites since that will not bring any Google Juice to either of you sites and may even have a negative effect.
In response to "I have many different sites. Can I cross-link between them?", Shashi Thakur of the Google Search Quality Team says:
Before you begin cross-linking sites, consider the user's perspective and whether the crosslinks provide value. If the sites are related in business -- e.g., an auto manual site linking to an auto parts retail site, then it could make sense -- the links are organic and useful. Cross-linking between dozens or hundreds of sites, however, probably doesn't provide value, and I would not recommend it.
Now this raises lot of questions. For instance, do we display only those blogs in Blogrolls that are interesting to our readers? What about blog networks like Weblogs Inc. or Gawker or B5Media that cross-link to all their sites in every post ? If Google is not giving enough weightage to unrelated links, let's just hope they are not penalizing sites for cross-linking.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/08/do-you-own-multiple-blogs-or-websites.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Very important. That Google dislikes cross-linking between unrelated sites is well-known. However, in the recent past, such crosslinking has been what sustains almost all Blog Networks, and PR definitely passes between them. It is critical to the strategy of many blog networks to get Google juice thus, and get the initial visitors and rankings.
But the basic fact is well known. You can find info dating back to five years in webmaster forums on the topic.
So it works. And google does not like it. But they all do it.
Now this reaffirmation from Google that they still do not like it.
So now what?
Written on 3/8/07 9:11 AM
Shashi says they won't help much. That does not, IMO, mean that I will be penalized or not get any juice at all.
Amit, I can with your own example tell that..When labnol.org was made, you sure did link it from DI. It did get the new site a lot of juice..DI was never penalized. Ok, it might not get as much juice as it would from another business blog, but its not that it did not get any...
Written on 3/8/07 12:00 PM
Um, we don't, nor have we for a LONG time, cross-linked the entire network on every post.
At b5, we're huge believers in trying to get users the content they're most likely to be interested in.
Written on 3/8/07 6:26 PM
"let's just hope they are not penalizing sites for cross-linking."
All web design companies have back links from sites created by them which are for different industries.
& Google can not penalise web design companies site.
Written on 4/8/07 2:16 AM
Jermey - I remember seeing the b5media blogrolls on all the network blogs. Maybe, that's no longer the case.
Written on 4/8/07 2:31 AM
I have a doubt.
If I put a comment on a site which is not related to my home site,
that will be penalized or not.
Written on 5/8/07 4:19 PM