Drop in "Links to your site" in Google Webmaster Tools

[tdawson09]

Last week I noticed a substantial drop in "Links to Your Site" in Google Webmaster Tools on several of my websites. Upon further investigation the reduced links were from our sister sites. It appears that Google has reduced the number of links they are counting from links in our headers and footers from these sites to our main websites. It is not affecting our rankings or traffic. Is Google doing some clean up with what they are showing in webmaster tools for links from related, owned sites? Any cause for concern?

[Ant71]

Really good question. Are the sister sites on the same server? Google will see they are related and not give you any value for it. Rather than getting the easy links from sister sites you will be much better off going for decent links from other websites, etc.

Basically its not the volume of you links you have but the quality....

[tdawson09]

Yes they are on the same server. These are sister sites that have been live and up for about 7 to 8 years. They get decent traffic, which is directed to our main sites. They were not necessarily set up for link juice. But, until last week, the links were showing up in webmaster tools. I'm assuming that Google is just doing some clean up, since they were not giving them link value anyway. Just wanted to make sure that was it and not something else I should be concerned about.

We do outside link building to legitimate sites, and do get good results. Just seeing if anyone is seeing the adjustment from Google from sister sites.