another clarification on crosslinking...

are industry specific link exchanges safe?

[Chris_1]

I read the FAQ and then did some searches in trying to understand crosslinks.

What I gather is that it is a list of the SAME links between sites that AREN’T related. (right?)

Here is my concern. A different, industry specific message board I'm on had the idea to get a large list of all the business web sites for everyone on the board, and then categorize by state, and have everyone put them on their sites so everybody could boost their google rating/PR.

I'd like to be in the list as it would give me some great links that are from others in the same industry. However, as a result of this board, a cross link red flag went up? Would google recognize this same list on all these different sites? Should everyone vary their list to make it work? Or are they flat out doing something counter productive?

Maybe I should drop out of the listing so it won't hurt my PR? (which is currently 5, and is a good PR for the niche I'm in - the highest PR for a site like mine that I have seen is 6). And, for my google category, I'm #1 out of about 15.

Sincerely,

Chris

[fathom]

Crosslinking is generally referred to when an owner of more than 1 site links them together multiple times on different pages or in other words creating multiple reciprocating links with a common pattern thus as the pattern gets heavier & heavier the chance to get penalized gets greater.

You could in affect do this as well with sites not under control of the same owner, however, a few links is simply just reciprocal links and nothing to worry about.

Be careful though - sites that just offer links for the sake of increasing PageRank can quickly become another link farm.

[rfgdxm1]

Since this seems obviously being done just to boost PR, sounds to me like Google would whack all these sites if the spotted it.

[hakre]

maybe a solution is to setup one site as the link-directory and every page in the buisness can link to it, so this page will get a higher pr and the linking pages also. what about this idea? is it the same risk?