Linking my sites to one another...

I was interested if interlinking all the sites within our automotive group would have a positive effect as far as link juice goes? Some of our sites are PR3 and PR4 while other are PR0. They are all different franchise brands, and most of them contain a portion of the same url followed by the franchise name.

Would this be a good idea?

 

Just make sure to use rel="nofollow" if you do this.

 

Are they all hosted on one server/C class IP?

 

I would assume so, yes.

 

what does this do?

 

It makes it so you won't get penalized by Google for abusing the system.

More info --> http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

 

If the sites are related go ahead and add links between them. Don't do site wide or footer links though. Make links that will be helpful to your site's visitors and you'll be fine with google. If the sites aren't related then don't do it.

 

They are all dealerships in the same city, just different franchise brands.

 

Yeah... I think you should say that it shoudn't have rel="nofollow".

 

Too many people are worrying about spamming. Google only steps in if you get a lot of complaints. If you want to rank high do what you got to do except know that there could be some consequences.

 

If the sites are related/same niche. dont worry abt any thing just link them. even site wide links are also not a prob if the niche is same. Believe me google will count those links as backlinks also.