so, i have 5 websites. will it hurt my rankings if i place all 5 sites on the same server? and also use the same database for all? will google think that they are kinda the same sites and will hurt all of them? thanks in advance!!
As long as you only link sites that are related to each other you'll be fine. It doesn't matter if they are on the same server or IP address.
No problem if all are hosted on the same IP. You will not get any advantages of inter linking and also the content should be unique in all the websites.
I Think that you must doing well, unless they are for the network of web sites you are going to sell lionks from. In this case better take care of the dedicated and different byC class IPs
here is no problem with that but make sure don't do internal linking with them and don't use same content otherwise it's ok
I think there is no problem if all your site was hosted in one server as long as they are not the same content.
You should be fine as long as you don't interlink the sites together (even through a third party that can "follow" the links). But I do have one question for you. Do you mean the same database (and its tables) powering all five sites, or do you mean five separate instances of the same database?
Avoid linking the sites together on all pages I have seen some sites go no where due to this. Also make sure you do not over do it with duplicate content again this will cause the sites to go nowhere and no pages to come in the search engines.