Will Google ban my sites?

Let's see if you can help me in this one. I have several "content" sites which cover different topics, all hosted in the same server. I have also one site which is an ecommerce site (which is my main site). My ecommerce site sells items addressed to a broad audience.

I would like to link all of my "content" sites to my ecommerce site with a banner & a link (sitewide banner & link), in order to try to get some profit out of my content sites. My "content" sites do not cover the same topic as my ecommrce site, but as said, my ecommerce site sells to a broad audience.

Will I risk anything from Google's by doing this. I am not looking for any PR boost (I know I will not get it since they are all in the same IP address), but I would like to make sure that they do not think this is some sort of linking scheme which will make me fall of in the SERPS with any of these sites. At

I would appreciate your inpyut in this matter. THanks

 

I dont think that would be a problem. There is nothing unusual about this. Im not sure if all these sites are mutually linked. If so it may be considered as a link campaign.

 

Thanks Mubheer,

Actually I do not want to crosslink them. I just want to drive traffic from my content sites to the ecommerce site. Just put a banner & a link.

 

This is termed as grouping and Google does not allow it. If Google notice your site doing that you may experience a sweet penalty.

 

oh my godness, Im having a couple of sites in similar IP linked to each other. you mean to say its grouping. they are related content too...........

 

Is this penalty valid for subdomains?

 

There is no problem with this. It is just like advertising on any site. I have always linked my sites with my other sites and never had any problem with Google.

 

Can you point me to the source for this information?

I've cross linked my own sites for a number of years without any obvious penalty being imposed on them. While they are not all entirely related to one another, the one common theme is that I own them all.

 

I had read something about this but that was related to porn sites from the same dedicated server or like that.

 

This IP address stuff is getting out of hand. It's a rumor, nothing more. I'm picking on the first guy who replied to you, mubheer, for no reason other than that he's the first person with a link to his site in this thread.

Try this link - according to whois.domaintools.com his site lives on an IP address with 36 other sites. That's actually quite low. Random sample of the links in people's signatures will show an average of several hundred sites per IP address.

 

Alexander, I undertsant what you mean, but if in the same server, for example 30 sites all link to one site in the same server (IP address), it is obvious that they belong to the same person.

However, I understand (which is what I would like to contrast with more experienced members) that this should be OK since linking the site one owns seems 100% natural & I would not expect Google to penalyse this in any sense. I would expect them not to pass any PR juice, that's all. However, before doing so, I prefer to see your opinions on this matter.

 

I doubt you will have any problems with this, imagine the poor people who are on shared servers

I know of a server with 7+ PR5 sites running on it, all off the same IP. They have no issues.

 

I also have cross linked my websites and there is no problem. So, go ahead, you will have no issues with search engines.

 

If you want to be safe and since all you want is to get traffic shared among your sites, just add the rel="nofollow" attribute to the link and Google won't care.

 

I will follow the way trafficnotice suggests. Although I think that nothing would happen, it is the safest way to proceed & I am not looking for any PR passed at all. Thanks for all your suggestions.

 

I personally wouldn't do sitewide links. Maybe just one link from the homepage of each content site. Or if you do really want sitewide links then use a nofollow attribute.

 

Actually, that's part of my point. Probably the 36 sites don't all belong to the first person who replied. Probably when you see 800 sites on a server (that sounds like a lot, but I've seen as many as 1,300) it's probably a lot of different people, on a cheap shared hosting plan. In fact, there are more people in the world than IP addresses. SSL requires a dedicated static IP address, so all kinds of ecomm is cutting into the pool of available IPs.

I think it would have to be quite excessive for Google to even notice, let alone care. If Site A only ever links out to Site B, if Site B's only external links come from Site A, and if there are thousands of these, it could be seen as manipulation. But as you say, it's very natural for a person to have two websites, even more sometimes. And it's natural for these sites to be somewhat related, but in different areas, so linking between them can serve benefit to your readers, which after all is what Google claims to want.