Illah - 11:30 pm on Aug 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

Recip links are being devalued in the sense that Joe's Used Cars repip linking with Mary's Hair Salon will be seen as a potential abuse of a link exchange. Joe's Used Cars recip linking with Mary's Auto Detailing will be just as good as a one-way link.

Basically Google is smart enough to know that recip linking is being abused. They are also smart enough to know that there are reasons that people legitametly recip. If you have a large percentage of irrelevant, off-topic links or are part of a cluster of sites that all interlink with one another, then you have a problem. It's an obvious link exchange scheme. They won't necessarily punish you, but you won't get much benefit from them.

--Illah