block robots from crawling page that has reciprocal links

how will robots identify if its paid or free link exchange?

[digic]

As discussed lately, G's latest update is for advertisers who are selling links. How can G identify if the links coming from my site are paid or free link exchange. Is it wise to block the robots from crawling the page that contains reciprocal links?

[tedster]

There's no way Google can identify every paid link as paid - they look for patterns, I'm sure. They also don't want to credit any site for a heavy amount of reciprocal links, and there's evidence that they don't reward backlink profiles that are lopsided. The key is to have a healthy, naturally balanced mix of backlinks.

If your link exchanges are so many that you need a directory structure to create your link pages, you might want to block bots outright or use rel="nofollow". Otherwise, I wouldn't bother worrying about the current paid link atmosphere - especially if you are not exchanging with just any old site but exercising discretion.

There is a stronger reason you might want to take some measure, however, especially with a large number of outbound links. How well can you monitor all those target sites? Not just for link rot 404's, but for a trget site changing ownership and ending up as part of a bad neighborhood? Too many outbounds to dicey sites can hurt you and that has nothing to do with link selling.