Enhancers physically interact with transcriptional promoters, looping over 
distances that can span multiple regulatory elements. Given that 
enhancer-promoter (EP) interactions generally occur via common protein 
complexes, it is unclear whether EP pairing is predominantly deterministic or 
proximity guided. Here, we present cross-organismic evidence suggesting that 
most EP pairs are compatible, largely determined by physical proximity rather 
than specific interactions. By reanalyzing transcriptome datasets, we find that 
the transcription of gene neighbors is correlated over distances that scale with 
genome size. We experimentally show that nonspecific EP interactions can explain 
such correlation, and that EP distance acts as a scaling factor for the 
transcriptional influence of an enhancer. We propose that enhancer sharing is 
commonplace among eukaryotes, and that EP distance is an important layer of 
information in gene regulation.