Hi Can anybody tell me if google penalizes website that interlink between each other under the same owner? I understand so far that it will only happen if it is excessive and the websites are totally unrelated. Would interlinking between 3 or 4 content related website hurt? Thanks
I wouldn't do it, especially if your sites are on the same IP/hosting/Geo location. However, I have interlinked some of my sites, but this was done temporarily (Euro 2008), and only as convenience for the visitors. That's why all these links have nofollow tag and will be removed in few weeks. So if you do it for your visitors and put nofollow there's no problem, but if you interlink them for PR this could cause you issues with G.
What's the problem as long as the sites are related in terms of content? Google is not going to penalise you for using the same IP, at worst the links might not carry the same weight but links between related sites is what the www is about.
I have several sites on the same IP. I interlink them extensively where they are related. I haven't had any problems. I don't link any site to another if it's not related. In addition, you want to get other back links to your site so your link profile is "well rounded".
Inter-linking is just a fancy way of saying link scheme. Never inter-link your websites unless your using the nofollow attribute or a redirectional URL script. If you review the Google Webmasters Guidelines you'll get the jist that internal linking to boost SERPs is against the guidelines. Now before you say, "Hey SSandecki, I'm not trying to do that!" then ask yourself why don't I just follow the rules and use nofollow or a redirectional script.
Careful interlinking is good practice, as you can see from this thread http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=875648 I might have inadvertently hurt one of my sites toolbar PR through having too many links from my own sites. Currently the only negative is the toolbar PR drop, still got the same SERPs and other than the 1st and second of this month when had just under 400 visitors a day, the other days traffic are all over 400 visitors a day (best month so far). If this is a penalty the PR drop is a warning. To be on the safe side I've removed all the home page links from my sites that use the themes that link back to http://www.google-adsense-templates.co.uk/ leaving only the links to the specific page that sells the theme the site uses. So gone from two links to the above site to one link to an internal page. Still quite a lot of links, but if I can't advertise my own products in this way there's something wrong! I consider 2 of my SEO services sites as one site and freely interlink between them as much as possible with no obvious problems. They both use the same template and same type of content (one for general webmasters looking for SEO services/info, the other more for those wanting to learn to be SEO consultants). My advise is use interlinking, but be careful, most penalties are automated and so do something just a little too much and you might trip an automated penalty despite your site not doing anything wrong. David Law
Interlinking will work fine but it shouldn't be over done and the sites must be related in someways so it'll still look "natural"
You say that you have had a drop in PR, that is probably due to PR sharing, meaning instead of being promoted to PR 3 for example that PR has been shared amongst your site that you have done link with. Like on my website, it was PR but then I added a one-way link to another of my sites and on the PR update my site went down to PR but that link to my other domain which just has a undeveloped landing page got PR1 and one of my internal pages gained PR1. So there will be PR spread amongst sites. Still quite a lot of links, but if I can't advertise my own products in this way there's something wrong! I consider 2 of my SEO services sites as one site and freely interlink between them as much as possible with no obvious problems. They both use the same template and same type of content (one for general webmasters looking for SEO services/info, the other more for those wanting to learn to be SEO consultants). My advise is use interlinking, but be careful, most penalties are automated and so do something just a little too much and you might trip an automated penalty despite your site not doing anything wrong.
I have always interlinked my sites as well; so far didn't see any problem. But its well known that linking will cause the PR leak. Since there are interlinking, both gain something as well.
Exactly. And for those who are saying "well I haven't gotten caught yet" remember it's only a matter of time. If you really want to feel the full-weight of the 800 pound Google gorilla bearing down on you, then just keep doing what you're doing. Eventually someone (perhaps a Google employee tasked with manual reviews of Web sites) will find your site and introduce it to Mjolnir (the "Hammer of Thor" for those who don't know much about Nordic mythology - which is often used among forum moderators to represent "the ban hammer").
It's nothing to do with PR sharing since it's between PR updates, this is all PR6 and PR5 pages (that's 1 PR6 and multiple PR5s) on the domain dropping to PR3 while no one else reported PR changes. Looks like the start of a penalty, so far still no traffic/SERPs drop, so just toolbar PR affected which suggests I have time to fix the problem. David Law
I used to interlink my sites until it got too messy because there was too many of them. Now I have my own mini webrings where I group my sites into related categories and each site links to the one either side of it in the ring. It used to be pretty common for websites to link to other websites that they own, until all the "what Google thinks" paranoia. If there's nothing wrong with your sites and they all good quality and not out to dupe anyone I don't see any harm in linking them together, as much for the use of human users as anything else. It doesn't do my sites any harm - it doesn't increase any Google stats much either, but I do get some click throughs from human users looking for more related stuff. I've never been penalized that I've noticed, but I've never tried to do anything devious either - all the whois info is the same for all my sites, which Google does take into account by the way, not just IPs, so it's pretty obvious that all the sites belong to the same person even if they aren't all on the same server, which most are.