When does interlinking go to far?

As most here do, I have several sites that fall in the same niche. With all of the Google penalizations going on, I don't want to ask for trouble.

In your opinion when is it natural interlinking and when does it cross that imaginary (and probably ever-moving) line that Google has set? Are sitewides their main target?

I'm planning on officially launching a new site in a few days and links to it from at least 2, if not 3 of my other sites would fit topically. I'm not all that worried about PR, but I don't want to hurt myself in the search rankings.

I have used sitewides and interlinking extensively and I have not seen any adverse effects

If you have several websites its understandable (if you ask me) to have some sort of interlinking
What are you supposed to do ?
Pretend like these sites are not yours ?
Google know which sites are owned are operated by you
I just remember to give link love to other sites not affiliated to me though

It would appear that some have come to believe that extensive interlinking is the cause for some of the recent hits by Google. This conversation has mainly pertained to directories and part of me wonders if it has more to do with that then the actual linking.

Seems to me if I own a business and that business in turn has several websites that I should be able to have footer sitewides as a matter of common business-sense. But trying to use common business-sense sometimes appears to go against what G seems to think is acceptable business practices - at least when it comes to being listed in their results and being given PR - the idea of paid links comes quickly to mind.

YMC - Let me give you an example of how site wide linking does good not bad.

I have 6 website customers with scuba diving businesses all at the same location. I also run three of my own websites that are related to scuba diving because they sell dive shop software. Now i also have two websites with the topic and location 'Samos Greece', related to the prior listed websites due to the travel topic. I also have the community website on Koh Tao where all the above sites have links to and from. As you see they are all somehow related. now one to  the other, they are not nessesarly on the same topic nor location (travel, software,diving,asia,europe,samos,kohtao etc...) but as a bundle, they are perfectly related to each other.

To top this up with a bit of the, evrybody knows them nonos, they all are on the same server!
There is no extensive linking between them though, just as much as it naturally needs. Here a link in article and there a link in the footer.

Now if you would like to see if google punishes me for that type into google: "koh tao samos" you'll find 8 of my above websites at the first 8 spots. That is nothing anybody but me would ever enter as a key phrase but it proofes the fact that sitewide linking when done reasonable does not hurt your position but the opposite. All of the above mentioned websites have at least first page if not place spots at Google and most other search engines for their top keywords or key phrases. You've hit the nail on the head with your phrase "common business-sense" that's what it all about. As long as YOU can see a reasonable relation, search bots will find it too.

If their ain't a relation between two sites and you still want to interlink them, create a relation by simply adding one or two articles to each side talking about the topics of the othe site and link them up. Voila - related. Don't forget that the webmasters make the Internet, NOT Google! We say what is related not Google. Far too many webmasters already have gone that way. Google wants this Google wants that.

I agree with your point about doing what makes sense vs what G thinks makes sense. I guess you could say I like to "know" the rules before I decide to break them. Of course knowing what G considers rules appears to be a moving target.

Thanks for the moment of common sense. I'm trying to build my network of sites and hopefully my income, but I don't want to make any foolish and avoidable mistakes in the process. I have in the past made decisions with my sites that went against the prevailing opinion of how things should be done and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't - but it's always better to make those types of decisions having as much information as possible.

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Google can be a little tricky with sitewides, especially in a new site. I would prefer to start building a site with one way links, try to get some social bookmark links, and then start with sitewides.

The problem with sitewides is that you may cause a slow down in the rankings. That means that you will still get the rank from these links but with a delay. But I have to tell you that I am not sure if this is still the case because it may have changed in the last algorithm update.

I suspect that G hates sitewides and would love to penalize them if they are not "nofollow". Problem is that with so many people creating blogs and other CMS-driven sites that sitewides are much more prevalent then ever. This is one of the few times that I thing G has it right in not handing down an across the board slap as so many sites would be impacted; many of whom with site owners who would not understand why.

Of course, I generally thing G is being way to heavy handed about this nofollow thing anyway.

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