Recips day are numbered?

Yes or No?

[Crush]

I am reading on a few forums that Recips days are numbered. They are working fine for me now.

What do you say?

[jaffstar]

If they are working for you, why quit?

It's not they are numbered, 1 way links are just worth more. Recpis will have their place provided they are on topic.

[glengara]

Recips days have been numbered for years ;-)

[Crush]

If they are working for you, why quit?

I am not. I am full speed ahead.

Any evidence that 1 ways are worth more?

[defanjos]

True reciprocals' days are not numbered, they have been around before Google and other SEs, I don't think they will disappear because of them.

There are people out there that don't give a rodent's behind about SEs - they will keep linking to their "friends", and vice-versa.

[mark1615]

What logic is offered for the impending demise of recips?

[eZeB]

There are two schools of thought -- the link guys and the SE guys. There are a whole group of webmasters that ONLY do reciprocal links and strategic alliances and don't get any traffic from the SEs and don't care.
Recips are a stable source of traffic immune to algo changes.

This approach goes way beyond hitting up webmasters for links -- contacting and working together with other webmasters always pays off big time. Requesting a link is the very least of it.

Depends on the product, but this approach is quite viable for many, many products, and there are lots of sites out there that are doing very well with 5% or 3% SE traffic.

The other approach is opt-in email (free tips, newsletters) which keeps them coming back and is also algo proof.

With all the nonsense over at Google these are very attractive alternatives.

[caveman]

The hay days may be past, but any SE that kills 'em completely will just shoot itself in the foot.

[iblaine]

Reciprocal links will be around for years because every search engine has its own algorhythm. Google will probably be the first to limit the value of reciprocal links but I don't see Y! or MSN doing anything about it in the near future.

[elklabone]

From my experience promoting a new site over the past 8 months, I think recips are now valued far less than one-way links - but only NEWER recips.

Why would they do this? Google wants everything to be "natural" and we all know that Google realizes that most of us are doing this only to boost our SE rankings. Therefore, it's logical to "discount" recip links, and give a boost to on-theme one way links, as they will appear more genuine. Makes perfect sense, and I think they're doing it now.

I have an older site with lots of recip links, and it hasn't moved any in rankings, so I think maybe there's a difference between links that were added years ago, and links that are currently being added, but this is just my theory based upon MY experiences with MY sites. I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.

My theory about older links not being discounted makes sense though, because you wouldn't want to tip your hand by making all established sites drop out of the top 50 because they use recip links. Again, recips are being counted, but I don' think they count as much as one-way. I think one-way links may count as much as three times as much as a recip. Again, just talking about NEWER links.

--Mark

[Rosalind]

I have no hard evidence either way, but I can't help but wonder whether this is just wishful thinking.

Who is it that makes reciprocal links, as opposed to merely giving and recieving one-way links? Nearly everyone does the former, but you might be more likely to see the latter on sites that have obfuscated their outbound links. So which category is more full of wily, spammy SEOs?

[manwah]

I think you should treat reciprocal link as a way to get traffic instead of just depends on search engines. A by-product is that it can increase link popularity and search engine ranking.

Therefore, I don't think link exchange will be dead. It just another way to get traffic, and we need more ways to get traffic!

[Crush]

I think you should treat reciprocal link as a way to get traffic instead of just depends on search engines. A by-product is that it can increase link popularity and search engine ranking.

You for real ;) There are not enough local resources on topic to satisfy the amount of links I need to be #1. No one links to me from a visible place on their site. Always a crappy links page.

A guy I know was #1 in his sector before Florida. Now he buys traffic and is at 40% of his previous traffic and it is costing him a lot more. I personally get links to be on the top of the first page and the above proves why.

[Crush]

Just to revive this one!

Has anyone notable spoken out on this subject in a conference etc?