I heard one news that is spiders is not giving more importance for reciprocal links!!! Last month One of my friends attended one seo conference from there he got this news!! Is it correct?
recips weightage in the overall ranking plan may or may not be discounted, but they still offer value.
It's true. Matt Cutts even specified that if you're doing these you "might" be penalized by SE. It's because your manipulating your link popularity thats why SE don't allow reciprocal links to be implemented on your website. But still there are lot of people getting away from these. So why worry?
link exchange is working good for my site. I've been doing it for 2.5 years and never had a problem. If you do it with relevant sites which mutual traffic can be beneficial for the users you won't have any problem, as it's improving the user experience.
You may find the following blog from Google Webmaster Central useful: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/04/linkowanie.html
No doubt reciprocal links are almost useless. It has been going on for at least one year. Not a new thing.
Sometimes we don't find the real answer in our own questions... but for me I believed based on my true experience and no matter if you get your link partners through reciprocal links as long as the link is Relevant to your site...
Reciprocals are considered artificial means to achieve page rank so not liked by SEs, especially recips between sites with different themes.
why? I can have a reciprocal link with another site because both webmasters think that each other site is relevant for our users. That´s why reciprocal linking is in fact still being useful for SEO.