So apparently G has cracked down on link exchanges and they are no longer effective. But...what about this situation: My company owns Site A and Site B. Another company that owns Site C wants a link from Site A because it has a PR of 4 in exchange for a link back from their site which has PR 5. Apparently they are still under the belief that link exchanges work. Anyway, what if we do the link exchange a different way.... Say that I offer to give them a link from our Site A (PR4) to their Site C (PR5) if they give us a link from Site C to our Site B (PR0)? Does that fool Google's little bots into thinking that this isn't a link exchange? Or do they know that Site A is related to Site B and will thus not give us link juice?
Since when? Link exchanges are still OK. They're just not weighed heavily. I wouldn't consider them "ineffective". -boxer126
I'm curious. How does Google know it's a 3-way link? How can they tell that you own both Site A and Site B unless the two are interlinked themselves?
Okay, this isn't a shot at you, but use common sense. ... They can't! You can set it up as an ad. You can set it up as a "Site of the Day." You can set it up as an article and have their URL in it. Or, just have their url anywhere on your page. Their computer cannot tell, period!
Google can tell. All it takes is a simple whois lookup on the domains, which is already part of the google algorithm.
Ok, I'll give ya that one. Maybe, maybe, it can do this, but so what? If, IF it sees it, then what? There are, God knows how many sites out there that exchange ads. ... And? Many sites exchange links via ads, articles, Site of the Day.... It's business as usual, and it will continue to be as such until Google scraps it. Besides, link exchanging is highly overrated, and it isn't necesssary. Hell, not even close.