Webmasters who link you from site A

but then ask you to link back to site B

[DXL]

I received an email from someone who added me to a PR3 resource page on a generic computer info site (oddly enough their homepage is only PR1), then asked that I do a return link to a commercial website of theirs. I remember reading that exchanges like this should be avoided, but can someone tell me specifically why?

[sugarrae]

You might want to try doing a search for triangular linking [google.com]. Hope it helps.

[DXL]

thanks, I couldn't remember the term used for it.

[SincerelySandy]

I think there are a lot of misconceptions about triangular linking. It may not be a good idea to link your own 3 sites together if they are not closely related (or even if they are). However, there are plenty of instances where it is appropriate and relevant for the user and in these situations I see nothing wrong with it from an SE or a human perspective. For example, lets say I have a site about nail salons in the city of BFE and a site about hair salons in BFE. If I link to the site of a nail salon in BFE, and ask them for a link to my hair salons in BFE site in return, what's wrong with this? The links are all very relevant for the user. The nail salon may not want to link directly to my site about nail salons out of fear of losing business but they generally won't have any concern over linking to my hair salons in BFE site. And if I am not asking them to link to my pr5 site while I link to them from a pr1 site then as far as I can tell, no one is getting the short end of a stick, including the visitor.

[Iguana]

I got a link request from someone who had a site where he had written a load of content - not too bad. Being one of the rare times that the link request was on topic and to a reasonable destination, I actually replied to the request and said ok. He replied that he would like me to link to a different site of his - off topic and purely consisting of affiliate links. Deleted the emails straight away.

I don't think that triangular linking is bad - but it will be spotted on a large scale just as surely as multi-page reciprocal links.