I have 200 nice pr links in google and 2000+ in yahoo & msn. I have exchanged link with almost everyone on this forum. Doing well in Yahoo & MSN. But I just can't figure it out how or what the *eck will it take to increase ranking in google. P.S: All related sites in my field are very stubborn and no one is ready to give a link. Is there anything else or a substitute to "related links" which can increase rankings. Please all seo's do share you advice and views about this as there are many out there with the same problem above.
I remember some of your link exchange threads. Funny stuff. Don't you think that having only PR2+ links is a bit unnatural? My opinion: Forget about PR. Build useful resource.
I've also seen that google is very slow concerning backlinks, maybe it's the time factor but am not quite sure. Another thing that I've seen is that links in forum signature counts as backlinks on msn & yahoo but not on google, why's that?
Reporting web page backlinks is not google's main business, why should they bother being fast... My opinion is that they crippled the link: operator on purpose. To prevent reverse engineering of page ranking and to limit unnatural SEO (e.g. copying competitors backlinks).
Ummm just off the top of my head (from being in a similiar situation). Scour other search engines (like yahoo/msn) for other different sites to get links from. Check to see what sites your competition have been linked from. Make sure you are listed on the likes of wikipedia, and are on some of the social bookmark sites. Try and get listed on a few blogs, that can help.