I don't think any of you treat this question from a SEO point of view. do you really want google to keep a close eye on all your moves?
I use both Gmail and yahoo mail for SEO-ing...I think those two are the most commonly used online mail.
I use Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail (MSN.com email accounts) for personal email. I have gotten used to spam, so I just delete it when I see it. I use Yahoo for business related emails because it is able to filter spam the best. I use my msn.com email accounts because I have had them forever. The msn.com is where I keep my primary (the bulk) of my email. I use Gmail for both marketing related communications with people I have never did business with before, and junk mail dump account. I don't accept solicitations from random users so, I guess I don't really use email accounts for that purpose. I use my website email as a means for dealing with customer service type of emails. If I receive a solicitation via any of those emails, I just ignore it. There are way too many scammers and phishermen out there to trust solicitations via email. The way I see it if you want a link on my website, then you can pay for ad space. I setup blogs with "no follow", since a lot of people just spam blogs and forums with their link. It may take me longer to build the backlinks that way for my site, but in the end it will be better received by the search engines. I just don't do link exchanges.
In your case that would be black hat. You are trying to manipulate the search results which is against their TOS. I'll leave you in doubt as you don't know my methods. There are plenty of choices and easier ways without pissing a site owner off.
so know one cares about the other fact that gmail never deletes an email??? Thats why I use it as a junk mail addy.... I dont think its wise to use them. It can alllllll come back to haunt you one day. Even if you dont do anything bad. They also search your messages for keywords to advertise to you, have you noticed??
Behavioral ad placement or at least I think that is what it is called, is fine with me. I still won't click an ad that I don't have interest in. Google's method is flawed. I don't want to be pitched dating sites because there is "graphic" emails in my junk folder. But if they do place an ad that I do find appealing I will click for that reason. It works a lot better than just pitching random ads. I actually wish I could disable certain company's ads like netflix. I already have a netflix account, so I don't need another one.
ok so you dont mind that, but do you mind gmail keeping every single email you get, even AFTER you delete it? Dont you think that is a privacy issue?
Maybe if I had something to hide. As a rule of thumb, I don't discuss anything via email that I would be worried about someone uncovering or revealing to anyone else. Besides if this is an issue of business communications then I definitely wouldn't be using a free email account for that. I reserve that type of communciation for my website email. If I had a staff then I would have a private exchange server to handle email. If they do keep my emails it doesn't matter to me, because I don't use my gmail account for anything important. Besides any business you send email to that has a decent IT dept is going to be archiving every email you send to them. So Gmail is only part of the problem.
I can assure you that at least 95% of the sites that appear on the top search results for competitive search terms are "trying to manipulate the search results" - after all that is what we all looking for... we build great sites with great content, but without proper SEO including getting backlinks, you cannot be there. Google made us use these methods and if you're smart enough you'll keep it all to your self.