austtr - 11:43 pm on May 12, 2006 (gmt 0)

I can think of several scenarios where A links to B, B links to C and C links to A.... the typical triangular link arrangement.

This can easily happen quite naturally, it can happen over an extended time period and may involve different webmasters who are completely unaware of the efforts of the others.... and most importantly, the links can be perfectly natural and add value to the viewer experience with all 3 sites.

It's hard to imagine any of the SE's specifically targeting ALL triangular links when there is so much potential for collateral damage to white hat sites.

As mentioned by other posters, it is probably a matter of scale.... if there are a few triangulars, no problem but if the links all appear at the same time and there are a lot of triangulars in the link mix, the sites may get flagged as being involved in artificial link creation. AKA... spam