Google's Matt Cutts Warns About Linking Too Many Sites Together

Yesterday, Google's Matt Cutts posted a video answer to the question "If I have 20 domains, should I link them all together?"
The short answer is, most likely no - you should not link them all together.
As I explained at Search Engine Land with my article titles Google's Matt Cutts: Linking 20 Domains Together Likely A "Cross Linking Scheme" - it may be considered by Google as a cross linking scheme - at least those are the words used by Matt Cutts.
Here is the video:

As you can see, the overall theme and feeling you get from Matt is that it is typically a bad idea.

So the next question I will hear is what about linking 18 sites, or 15 sites, or what about 10 or 5 sites together. I love those questions. Those asking those questions are linking the sites for one purpose, ranking.

So what about it? :)

Source : Google's Matt Cutts Warns About Linking Too Many Sites Together

Image credit to BigStockPhoto for circle of chains

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8 Weeks Later, Google To Release Panda #25

As I reported in my live blogging last night and on Search Engine Land - Google's Matt Cutts announced a Panda refresh is coming this weekend. Either this Friday, March 15th or this Monday March 18th.

It has been 7 weeks since the last Panda refresh, version 24. So when this actually pushes out, it will be closer to 8 weeks since that last update.

We've speculated a few weeks ago that Google would go on with tradition and release a 4 week update at the end of February but that did not happen.

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Confirmed: A Panda Refresh, Version #23

Update: Google has confirmed that this is a Panda refresh. This would make it version 23 and it impacted about 1.3% of English based queries.
I should note, I am shocked they pushed out a refresh before the holiday seasons. Last year they promised they would not do a Panda update before the holidays. What a difference a year makes.
A week ago, we reported on some very strong signs of a Google Update last Thursday. Google told us there was no update, not Panda and not anything. Webmasters feel Google is either lying or are clueless
That being said, there are now new reports in the same WebmasterWorld thread of an update hitting a few hours ago in the Google search results.
Someone even asked me on Twitter if there was a Panda update:

New Panda data refresh rolling out: ~1.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Background: goo.gl/rvMZj
— A Googler (@google) December 21, 2012

In the WebmasterWorld thread, here are some of the posts:

Looked like something got rolled back to me. My positions have all reverted to where they were last week.

There has been some shuffling overnight (in which my main key term page has gone from page 2 to page 4).

Now it is really early and the reporting tools have yet to report as of this morning, including MozCast, SERPmetrics and SERPS.com. Although, since this seems to have been updating early this morning, the tools may not show anything until tomorrow.
Google has confirmed a Panda refresh impacting 1.3% of queries!

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Confirmed: Google Panda 3.9.1 Update

Over the past few days, even as far back as last Friday, I noticed a lot of chatter on a possible Google update.
So yesterday, after returning from my family vacation, I emailed Google to confirm that an update was indeed happening. Shortly after receiving my email, they replied that they just confirmed it via Twitter.
Google said they rolled out a minor Panda refresh this past Monday on August 20th. This refresh only impacted less than 1% of search queries according to Google.

Panda data refresh this past Monday. ~1% of queries noticeably affected. More context: goo.gl/wQRZ0
— A Googler (@google) August 22, 2012

The previous Panda refresh was a month prior on July 24th.
I did receive emails from a few people who asked me to verify that this was a Panda refresh. Because they saw changes on their Panda penalized (pandalized) sites and wanted to know if they finally broke out of that penalty. Here is a screen shot from one site that recovered with this update:

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Google Panda Refresh On August 19th: Version 3.9.1

Google has confirmed they have pushed out a Panda refresh this past Monday.
This updated affected less than 1% of search queries and is a “minor” Panda refresh. We emailed Google, after hearing speculation of a Panda update and Google confirmed it by tweeting it.
Here is that tweet:

Panda data refresh this past Monday. ~1% of queries noticeably affected. More context: goo.gl/wQRZ0
— A Googler (@google) August 22, 2012

Google has said the Panda updates will be smoother and more consistent going forward, unlike the Penguin update, which will be more jolting.
The previous Panda update was version 3.9 on July 24th, so just about a month ago.
I know at least one Panda “victim” who recovered this past Monday due to this refresh.

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