Google now officially bans Link exchange and reciprocal links schemes ("Link to me and Ill link to you.") in its webmaster guidelines.
10 Comments

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Comments
Via Threadwatcher: http://www.threadwatcher.com/2007/08/07/66695-the-reciprocal-link-ban/
Actually, thats somewhat old news, but well worth a reminder. Google has devalued reciprocal link exchanges for ages (covered under the vague "Dont participate in link schemes designed to increase your sites ranking or PageRank." policy) and this page was around for a while now, although widely undiscovered. What has changed is that Googles artifical recip detection was constantly enhanced until it covered nearly all plain vanilla attempts to boost PageRank with reciprocal or three-way links, and that Google meanwhile clearly states that these link swaps are disliked. Sphunn.
Google has devalued such links long ago, but now its officially acknowledged in the webmaster guidelines. Until now Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Central repeatedly stated that some link exchange is OK. So this is in fact a big difference.
Define "some link exchanges" :) Is it possible that you heard "naturally gained reciprocal links are OK" and translated that bit to "some link exchanges are ok"? I dont want to start a debate on semantics but there is a huge difference. So called natural links arent exchanged, in an ideal world theyre earned in the sense of reap where the seed is compelling content.
To make my point clear: Google usually does not penalize techniques or patterns, they try to figure out the intent and judge based on that. Hence from Googles perspective "I link to you and you link to me" literally addresses link trading but not situations where you link out to a great page and after a while the other Webmaster returns the favor because he found a nice piece on your site (not because you guys were talking about links).
This is essentially a theological debate: Attempting to determine any given actions (and by inference: actors) "intention" (as in "sinning") is always bound to open a can of worms or two. It will always have to work by conjecture, however plausible, which makes it a fundamentally tacky, unreliable and arbitrary process. The delusion that such a task, error prone as it is even when you set the most intelligent and well informed human experts to it (vide e.g. criminal law where "intention" can make all the difference between an indictment for second or first degree murder...) can be handled definitively by mechanistic computer algorithms is arguably the most scary aspect of this inane orgy of technological hubris and naivety the likes of Google are pressing onto us.
Sebastian, check this out to know what I mean: http://www.seobook.com/archives/001675.shtml
The keyword in that quote from Matt is "excessive" IMO. Probably excessive means traded, artificial, evil ... ;) However, I wouldnt read that as "Matt Cutts and the Google Webmaster Central repeatedly stated that some link exchange is OK". Googles definition of a natural reciprocal link as I understand it doesnt include terms like "trade", "swap" or "exchange". Im sorry, I dont get your point from Aarons post. Google has just manifested a well known fact with this help page. And yes, its newsworthy, thats why Ive sphunn it :) Here is my longish interpretation: http://sebastianx.blogspot.com/2007/08/google-manifested-axe-on-reciprocal.html
Sebastian, sorry, but actually youre wrong. This is new, Google used to actually *suggest* trading links with other sites. This is, as near as I can tell, a reversal of policy.
Perhaps weve a different understanding of "trading links" *from Googles POV*. Also, the quote provided with the submission lacks context, actually Google talks about links pages created for the sole purpose of PageRank manipulation on that page: "some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Googles webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your sites ranking in search results." I dont remember that any Googler encouraged link trading, and bits like "Have other relevant sites link to yours", "Make sure all the sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online" or "Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites" from the guidelines dont exactly promote (reciprocal) link exchanges/trades/swaps/... I may have missed such suggestions from Google, can you point me to a source or two?