Is footer cross-linking between your own websites still effective in 2026?

Hi everyone,

I have a question for people who have been doing SEO for a long time.

Years ago, I owned several different websites, all in different niches. I used to put a "Friends" or "Our Websites" section in the footer of each site, linking to all of my other sites. Every site linked to every other site, even if they weren't topically related.

Back then, I had the impression that it worked surprisingly well. The anchor text seemed to help those sites rank for the targeted keywords, and overall I felt it gave a noticeable SEO boost.

I'm wondering whether this strategy is still considered effective today.

Do people still do this successfully, or is it now mostly ignored (or even seen as a negative signal by Google), especially when the sites aren't in the same niche?

I'd be interested in hearing real-world experiences rather than just Google's official recommendations.

Thanks!

@PixelGrowth You weren't imagining it. That worked properly around 2009 to 2012. The reason it stopped is more interesting than "Google got smarter".

Two bullets in Google's own spam policy describe what you just described, almost word for word:

• "Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites"
• "Excessive link exchanges, or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking"

Both still in there in 2026, so there isn't much ambiguity about how it gets classified.

The part that matters for your question though: it's probably not costing you anything either. The outcome these days is silent devaluation, not a penalty. No GSC notice, no manual action, nothing to appeal. Which is exactly why people still swear by it -> they check for a drop, don't find one, and never notice there was no lift.

Three things work against a footer ring.

A sitewide doesn't stack. Whatever one domain can pass you, it passes about once, whether that's across 40 pages or 40,000.

It's reciprocal. A links B, B links A, and most of it cancels. The version you ran, where every site links every other site, is the weakest shape there is.

It's one hop to spot. Same template slot, same anchor set, same small group of domains, usually the same registrar, host, GA property and AdSense ID.

What still works with sites you own: one-directional into the site that actually matters instead of a ring, in content or on the homepage rather than a template slot, only where the topical relationship is genuine, anchors varied. Link them the way you would if Google didn't exist.

Disclosure, I sell homepage links, so weigh that how you like. It does mean I can tell you what a network operator does here though. We don't cross-link our own sites, and not out of virtue. A ring caps what every site in it can pass, and one shared footprint takes the whole set down together instead of one at a time.

Makes sense.

Do you think Google mostly dislikes the sitewide footer pattern, or the fact that it's a closed network of owned sites?

If the same links were added naturally inside relevant content instead of every footer, would you expect them to pass value, or would you still avoid it altogether?

If you own multiple websites that are related, I don't see an issue with linking between them when there's a genuine reason to do so. The problem starts when the same links appear across every page just for SEO.

In 2026, context and relevance seem to matter a lot more than the sheer number of links.

We also did it recently for the gambling industry as a custom strategy, and it worked well. But we mixed it with other backlink types to make everything look more natural.