LinkPartners

[TylerDurden]

I've just found the thread discussing LinksManager and it's sister site LinkPartners [webmasterworld.com ]
Because I'm using LinkPartners directory for finding link exchange partners, some colleage's opinions in this thread warried me a bit.
Even I personally think it's nothing to do with spam and possible Google penalty because it's doesn't do anything artificial but helps webmasters willing to exchange links find each other easylier, but...
- is it safe to be registered in LinkPartners directory?
- is it safe to exchange links with sites listed in LinkPartners?

[jimbeetle]

Many folks on WW, myself included, would say stay away, don't go near them!

What makes this interesting is that linkpartners home page is a dang nice pr7 but all interior pages of the categories I checked were grey bar 'not ranked by Google' which shows a possible penalty or ban. (Linksmanager is a grey bar also and it is *always* smart to stay away from any automated third-party management system.)

It might be worth it to use linkpartners for research as it includes sites with pretty good pr trickling down to their links pages. But check each one very carefully to be sure that not all of the links are going to other linkpartners sites, that can be a sure cause of trouble.

[TylerDurden]

Thanks for reply, Jim Beetle.
I've just checked all the categories in letter "A" in LinkPartner and they are all PR4. Home page of LinksManger is PR7 and all other pages on this site (FAQ, Features, Media e.t.c.) are high PR as well. What you've seen as gray PR was most likely something like [linksmanager.com ] which is indeed Gray Bar however that fact could be explained because Google often does not crawl dynamic URLs with text parameter (like?linkpartners in this case).
Regarding LinkPartners sites. Just today I've checked a few handreds of them as a potential link exchange partners and I've noticed there are some Gray Bar sites but vast majority of the sites where ranked well.
Provided the opinion of more experienced webmasters on this forum is very important to me (seriously) I've decided to postpone link exchange with LinkPartners members for now.
However I would suggest to discuss it further to get more evidence against/in support using LinkPartners.