While to the honest business person, the idea of linking all of your sites together in one network seems to make sense. You spend money on advertising and the whole of your network should really benefit, but what do Google think about this?

The likes of Google are known to take a dim view of linking sites which are owned by the same third party, and while people are finding ways around it, Google are adamant that if they find this happening they will disadvantage your websites when the Page Rank reviews come around. The simplest mistake which site owners make is to link sites which are hosted on the same IP address. Why are Google so sensitive about this and can they really check who owns which site, and why they are linked?

Google are against “structured” site linking because it can give a boost to some or all of the websites involved, and they are also trying to kill the link exchange and link selling markets. They have ways and means of checking to see which sites are inter linked, using the information which their “spiders” collect on their never ending journey around cyberspace.

There are also rumours that Google are putting together an operation which will actually check the public records to see who owns particular sites, to see if they are using different IP addresses to get around the situation. All in all Google are doing their best to outlaw link exchanges / building as much as possible, but they will never truly control the market - there are ways and means.

If you are thinking of linking your sites, be very careful because what you gain on the traffic, you may well lose on the next Page Rank exercise!