Are Reciprocal Link Swaps OK In Google?

Should we gain link popularity by swapping?

[netnerd]

The conventional way to gain link popularity has been firstly to swap links with as many web masters as possible.

Now that the engines are wise to this, the common philosophy seems to be to swap only with sites of a similar theme.

Does anyone know (I.e. you GoogleGuy if you are watching!) if google feels this practice is ok? Or is there a time coming when google will 'cancel out' a link from site A to site B if there is a link from sites B to site A?

Im trying to build a new site here and i want to be sure i set off about promoting it correctly.

Do i swap links with other widget sites or do i swap with sites that people who might want widgets, even if the sites isnt directly about widgets?

Or do i just not swap links at all!

[Alphawolf]

Im with mfishy a link exchange partner that takes the link you give him and doesnt give one back, or atleast appears to get one back, but doesnt allow SE's to give credit for them is a sneaky little devil.
Carma...... what comes around goes around my friend. You practice that, you'll get what you deserve.

Link exchange partner? Nooooooo. None of the low PR sites were business sites at all. Nor were they really in depth/good hobby sites.

They are all cheesy geocities/homestead/tripod type sites that people don't pay for or make any money from.

In fact, they make money from my client by signing up and performing thier services. So, they are the ones who should be more than happy to stick in another link to one of the fastest paying companies (my client) in the industry.

Or...drop all the sites that don't link back to them. but if they did that, they'd have no websites because none link back.

I think many are taking my comments and instead of reading my specifics are applying the thought "What if someone did this to me?"

As far as getting what I deserve...whatever that means- the only thing that could happen if I implemented the methods fully is a few links get removed. <shrug>

AW

[deanril]

Get what you deserve depends on Carma.

In your case, it may be ok, and really not a problem, for some odd reason, I still dont understand. But in the rest of the 99.9999% of the www if you say lets exchange links, and you put one up and I put one up only you have robots.txt saying no index/follow. Thats crud.....

And if your site disapears, or you get fired, or whatever and theres no reasonable explantion then you'll know why, or a bus runs you over or a large building falls on you, who knows. I play it straight, dont need to worry about carma. Therefor I never ask "why me". : )