Gray bar - can't get recip links

[Sheppy]

A good portion of my sales come from the traffic I get from my recip links with other related sites. The problem I am having is that my site is now showing a grey bar (since the last update, was 4 and 5)yet I am still getting the same traffic from google and I am still in the top 3 or 4 on a lot my keywords. I was under the impression that if I had a grey bar I was not included in the index at all yet nothing seems to have changed other than the grey bar. As I am always looking for good recip links(which increases my sales) now I am having a ton of trouble getting other webmasters to link to me because of this grey bar. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

[Sheppy]

Hi Everybody
Thanks for all the great info. I talked to a fellow that does SEO and he did a quick check for me, for free at that. It is something that he has never seen before and also figures I should get me PR back at the next dance. When you go to my home page it shows that it hasnt been cached but if you do a search for one of my key words and check the cache there,it comes up. I am still being spidered as when I updated my page the other night I came up on the first page under some new key words a couple of days later. I have put off looking for recips until I see what happens at the end of the month. Again thanks for everybody's help, its been very interesting. :-)
Shepp

[stevenha]

So far in this thread, there has been a fairly even split between folks who think PR should be ignored versus folks who don't. I personally think PR should not be ignored, and my advice to Sheppy is also to wait for your PR to recover next update, and build content in the meantime.

I just gave a link to a grey PR site, and I am worried about doing it, but the other webmaster insisted that his site is just too new to show PR. ( he has all his text in H1 tags + CSS formatting. )

I'm giving the guy the benefit of the doubt until after the next update, but I feel like I'm taking a risk AND being generous... while the other webmaster seems frustrated, needy and not grateful enough.

In more general terms, whether or not one chooses to believe that linking to a PR-grey or PR0 page is risky (for associating with a bad neighborhood), I think the other concern, that weights more heavily, is the issue of inequitable PR trades.

When talking about reciprocal linking (and not just linking for a users benefit), then balancing the value of PR gained and lost is a consideration for many webmasters.

[BigDave]

I just gave a link to a grey PR site, and I am worried about doing it, but the other webmaster insisted that his site is just too new to show PR. ( he has all his text in H1 tags + CSS formatting. )

I would drop him. Not because I think he's being penalized, but because he is trying stupid stunts like that. At some point you know that he will try something else that he reads about on some page or another.