Google could penalize you for anything within your control. This includes who you link to. Link to spammy sites, and there's consequences. Warkot
Ya, you should allow reciprocal linking. But try and do reciprocal linking in a different format. For example: http://www.acuraautos.net/associates/cars-related.php That doesn't look like your normal reciprocal link page. The links are scattered and it "looks" like content, which is the point.
The bottom line is you dont need to worry about getting banned if someone links to you, but beware that you can be banned if you link to a already penalized are going to penalized site. Akash Kumar
I think the point was to include links on the page the smart way, which means mimicking how links naturally appear on a page within body text, and avoiding the standard links.html structure such as this one: some link -- some description some link -- some description some link -- some description some link -- some description Warkot
Yes, it can hurt you. One of my sites that had a lot of reciprocal links was removed from the msn index and I just received an email from msn spam that infact it was due to our site being "part of a link exchange" which msn considers to be spam. It has also been penalized by google most likely for the same reason. Since reciprocal linking doesn't help your rankings much or at all anymore and may get you in trouble, I would use your robots.txt file to block the bots from visiting a reciprocal link page if you want to use them; just make it clear to the people you are exchanging with. If it's for traffic then they shouldn't care anyway. That being said, some reciprocal linking between relevant sites should be allowed as long as it is natural if they are related and, like people said, you should make sure you are linking to a quality site. If you aren't sure, I would err on the side of caution and use the robots.txt method.
if you link to bad neighbor hood you will get punish, now one can stop other website from linking to there so how can you get punish for that.
Sites That link to your site doesn´t affect your directory, the only thing that could affect your site are the links that are placed in your site
You can allow reciprocal links in your directory. BUT whenever someone submit a site with a reciprocal link, do check out that site, and also the page where your link has been placed and whether it violates search engine guidelines(porn sites/online drugstore etc). If its a quality site then no problem. BUT beware, there are some people who will submit their crap sites with reciprocal links, dont hesitate to delete them.
msndude just replied in here http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=79415&page=3 that when applying for reinclusion, msn does look at incoming links.
It can hurt you, but you can get a lot of traffic from reciprocal links , I get about 150 visits perday from reciprocal links. I believe search engine will penalize you, if all your links are from reciprocal links.
Absolutely. Having all your links from reciprocals is definitely a bad idea. Mix it up, always mix it up. Warkot
Some solution can be to restrict reciprocal links for directory only from sites with PR higher than 1 or 2. But it also can be a spamy website. No easy answer.
If I were you, I would not allow reciprocal links in my directory. You really want to have people linking to your website because of content quality, rather than a selfish expectation of returned "favor". It takes more work, but the long-term value is much higher both from the SE and general marketing perspectives. It also gives you a good indication of how well you're actually doing (often even more so than the webtraffic). Just a thought.
Reciprocal linking is fine. Just trade with relevant sites. I have been trading links for 2 years with no consequences and I hold top rankings for all my (competitive) keywords across the big 3 engines.