strange behavior while interlinking my own sites

Two years ago I started site A. Site A did good, almost too good - but in a way it makes sense, a lot of returning users, natural branded searches and good content.

Five weeks ago I launched site C, which is just a company page (it is actually one single page). Now site A links to C and C links to A (because A is a product of C).

And of course I started site B, another product of C. That was two weeks ago, and it went well for a while. Until yesterday, when obviously site B linked to C, and C back to B (B is also a product of C).

My clicks on B were a few, but impressions were going up on it, until the yesterday's linking, and today the impressions are gone. When I say gone, I mean it (no new impressions).

I thought it was a niche problem, because let's assume site A is about nuclear energy (it isn't, but the comparison is right on spot), while site B is about fossil energy. So they talk about energy, but very different types of energy. A and B cannot cannibalize on keyword competition, because the keywords are totally different.

As a quick measure, I dropped all links because apart for some sort of clustering, they don't offer much.

So what the hell happened?

Sounds like Google might have treated the cross-linking between your sites as unnatural or spammy. Sudden drops in impressions can happen if it thinks sites are overly interlinked without clear value.

any non-chatGPT thoughts?

rdlzr77 said:

any non-chatGPT thoughts?

Click to expand...

I don't have anything to add here but if we report responses for being clearly ai generated, do you think that actually does anything / changes anything about their account(s)?

Unknown Proxies said:

I don't have anything to add here but if we report responses for being clearly ai generated, do you think that actually does anything / changes anything about their account(s)?

Click to expand...

If you report it, we do something about it. Now, back to your regular programming......

Mrnewbie said:

If you report it, we do something about it. Now, back to your regular programming......

Click to expand...

Thank you. Much appreciated!

Google may have grouped your sites as a network, and the cross-linking could have triggered a visibility drop. Removing the links was a good step, now give it some time to recover.

Obviously is either this cross-linking done with utmost transparency (seems to be bad, ok), or placing 3 ads on site B (I thought we are allowed to monetize our work, just like Google or others), or some other cause which is unknown at the moment.

Meanwhile, site A is #1 in US and top 5 in UK for a hard keyword (two keywords in fact, very similar but with some differences in traffic - which are really what site A is about).

So... my best guess is that Google search has some truly unknown sides even for the "mighty" google engineers. Yet somehow it manages to send traffic to some tens of thousands of sites globally, whom they trust, and these sites think they offer valuable content (some do, many don't).

And people are going to AI chatbots to find stuff, and the chatbots regurgitate the top 10-20 positions, and give you absolutely nothing in return.

Yeah, the future looks bright for small publishers...

Seems like Google considered it a link farm. As you've already removed links, things should get back to normal. If they don't, then check for any penalties.

Sometimes sudden drops after interlinking can come from Google reevaluating site relationships, especially if it sees new domains tied too closely together. Giving it time while focusing on content strength and checking Search Console for coverage or manual issues is usually the best next step.

I’m new to this, but maybe Google just re-evaluated the links between your sites. I’d wait a few days to see if impressions return.

You are right! Google likely sees this as a spammy tactic, similar to what happens with PBNs. Google’s algorithm can flag this, which is why you might have seen a drop in impressions or even had some pages may deindexed.

Yes, but then why linking A -> C and backwards did not influence at all site A? Just because it's a bigger and established site?

Today I am still at 0 (zero) impressions, from an average of 2k/day (with a top of 8k/day).

If you link new sites too much, Google may put them in one group and show them less, which can cause the drop.