The Future of Recip Links

[nitecoder]

As I've been working my butt off lately on reciprocal linking, I'm beginning to wonder... is it likely that Google will one day view recip linking as artificial inflation of popularity, or at minimum view them as no longer any indication of popularity? Will they then say "recip links cancel each other out" and throw them all away?

Signed,

Hates Working Butt Off For Nothing

[Conard]

I had three sales from reciprocal links this week all ready, so I don't think you will regret the work.
One way or the other or both it will pay off.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Recip linking is good, essentially for topic related sites

I dont have a prob with it and im sure any other entity *shouldnt* have a problem with it...the web is the "web" because even if someone did decide that linking was bad, theyd always have another part of the web that would allow it

sorta ties in with the "government entity" thread IMO :)

[JamesR]

It looks as if some in the SE community are trying to filter out false link inflation:

[webmasterworld.com...]

however, that seems to me a very difficult process.

You will at least get traffic from them and a sort of branding effect across the web. I know when I see a site linked to a lot in a certain community, I start to see it as somewhat of an authority.

[rogerd]

As Conard points out, reciprocal links often generate traffic on their own, in addition to any benefit with search engine results. If you have good quality links from related sites, you can't go wrong.

Just don't swap links with spammers, that spam link on your site CAN hurt you. (And, thinking of Google in particular, that link from a PR0 site won't help you much anyway!)

[nym_fan]

Hey nitecoder:

yes reciprocal links can take time but like Conrad said-they can produce their own traffic and money (if the case my be).

I do not think Google will ever discount recip linking because it is ever where you go on the web.

If you get links in your topic area, as was stated before you really can't go wrong.

Good luck

[Reflect]

I have to concure. I see some great traffic from my recip. links. They seem to give very targeted traffic. They have also emailed me stating roughly the same thing.

Win, win? I think so.

Brian