Help needed: Effect of sitewide footer links?

[davex]

I run a bunch of sites and employ the same SEO tactics on all. Most do very well, but two are languishing. These two are part of a network of about 60 sites that are all independently run on top-level domains, but share the same basic design and same branding.

These 60 sites are all interlinked through a network footer that appears on every page of every site in the "network." The footer is a list of every site in the network, linking to each.

So on these 60 sites, let's say there are 60,000 pages total. That means the Widgets site is receiving 59,000 incoming links from other top-level domains - but 95% of which are on unrelated topics. So about 57,000 incoming links from unrelated sites. With every page linking to every other site in the network.

Good or bad?

Could this have led Google to flag this "network" for circular linking, for being a linkfarm or a "bad neighborhood?"

thanks

[webd]

Read through Matt Cutts' blog (Google spam team). He mentions unrelated links in the footer a few times.

I don't think that it's a good idea. Site-wide footer links to unrelated sites fits the profile of "paid text links" or other forbidden SEO techniques.

[dcristo]

Good or bad? Bad! That's basically a link farm there mate.