I've talked to people who habitually keep all their domains very separate. Different hosts, privacy for the domain owner info, no interlinking, no common accounts for stats or ads, no affiliate links that can be traced back to the same account, etc. Be definition, a scheme like this should work, it's just how do you know for sure you covered every base?

I meant "by definition". Ugh.

Could we also expand this topic a little by inviting people to share actual data (or press reports, or whatever) that indicate Google does things this way? Because I can't see that it would give them much return on the effort. I mean, if you are a webbie who repeatedly creates lots and lots of sites Google considers spam, it might be worth their time for Google to identify you so they know what to do with all your future sites. But punishing any ol' webmaster because some of your sites get less traffic than others? What's the point? And that would punish people who run sites about causes or orphan diseases that are not terribly popular with most folks, but mean a lot to people who are affected by them. It just doesn't seem like this would be worth Google's time except as a penalty for a webmaster who offends repeatedly.

I think this is one of the mysterious questions out there.

I'm sure the web spam team wants to id these people, but is it truly worth the effort and the amount of data that would need to processed. I think the upside is negligible from their stand point.

ever since they got gwmt, its being self evident that they do look at the webmaster and follow entire portfolio

IMHO, this has been beneficial for some, and Catastrophic for others , we all know who we are :)


its kind of a relief to see these thread(s), even now, probably the end of the web as it was

I think they'd look at you more closely if you have some sort of elaborate spamming and linking operation.

But for merely a site that could be considered "thin", I don't think it can harm your whole portfolio.

But for merely a site that could be considered "thin", I don't think it can harm your whole portfolio.

I don't think a few thin pages on one site will hurt your other sites but what do I know, it's possible. I sold a site recently to focus my efforts on one so if Google continues to link them together then my remaining site is at the mercy of another owner. I don't think that aliasing sites would be a good way to build search result pages.

ever since they got gwmt, its being self evident that they do look at the webmaster and follow entire portfolio

Right, I'm not questioning that. I'm just questioning under what circumstances they bother doing anything with this information. You mention that some people have benefited - under what circumstances does that happen? If you have one really good site, will they overlook some issues on another site you have?

It can't have escaped your attention that quite a few webmasters sail through all google events, Panda, penguin, emd, above the fold ,, etc , etc,

with impunity

E.g. not with standing the complete rubbish some post about ehow being occasionally bitten by a Panda, publicly available estimates of their traffic shows a relentless climb through ALL iterations of Panda, I only mention ehow cos they a big , brand, but the same is true at a lower level

Conversely, once they fixate on your account for the opposite reason, you're toast

Right. So the point I was making was, if you fall somewhere in the middle, is this really an issue? I.E., if you are not doing anything spammy but neither are you someone who somehow seems to get a free pass to the top positions, do you really need to worry yourself to death about Google linking your new site with your old one?

My guess is that you don't need to worry about this unless you have already come to their attention in a negative way.

My guess is that you don't need to worry about this unless you have already come to their attention in a negative way.

I completely agree with this, but with an important caveat.

If you are "testing" in order to push the envelope, find where the boundaries are, to really find the limits of what triggers various negative ranking mechanisms, you should obviously keep that seperate.

By extention, if you are launching something that is potentially "thin" and could conceivably be drawing negative attention, you might want to launch that under a seperate cover. Although, the time you spend "disassociating" the new site from your portfilio might be better spent creating a truly quality offering that you would be proud to include amongst your more established sites.

*******

I'm sure the web spam team wants to id these people, but is it truly worth the effort and the amount of data that would need to processed

Absolutely it is worth the effort.

The web is huge. Most of the web is dross, but it is not actively manipulative webspam.

Webspam is perpetrated by a relatively tiny subset of publishers. If you can identify this subset, you can save yourself a substantial amount of effort from trying to pick it up at the document level.

Very good caveats, Shaddows. .

Not to point out the obvious, but...well, does anyone have answers to the OP's question?

I offered the best answer I know of in my first post: leave no trail between your existing sites and the new one. I don't know what else you could do.