I have a link list/search engine site with over 11,000 user submitted links. I have always added my own sites to the link list. There are 20 different categories and my sites are in topic related categoies. I have maybe 100 of my own links all with different content within my link list. Would this be considered crosslinking? I have to be able to promote my own sites as well as promoting the user submitted links surly SE understand that.
It is crosslinking - you are linking from one of your sites to another. If you are asking whether you will get a penalty then the answer is probably not.
All the links in my links list are dynamically displayed like this: http://www.domain.com/cgi-bin/pseek/go.cgi?id=134144 If I create a robots.txt file like this ----------- User-agent: * Disallow: /go.cgi -------------- Would this block the bots from seeing the crosslinked sites? I'm trying to figure out was way to keep from being penalized for crosslinking. I'm not crosslinking to improve my rank. I just need to be able to promote my own sites without being penalized.
The easiest way to do this is to put the rel=nofollow in your linking code. It tells the search engines that they should not follow this link. Honestly, I don't think that these crosslinks will hurt you in the short run. The best I have seen, google is not penalizing cross-links at this time. Who is to say what the future has in store, but for now, it seems safe. Bill Platt