I thought I would share this link to Google's Webmaster Help Center , pertaining to Link Schemes. While most of this I already knew, I didn't realize reciprical link requests was considered by G. as a bad scheme. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356&query=link+exchange&topic=&type=
Neither did I although when thinking about it, it would make sense. I wonder if google can see the difference between legitimate web partners I.e host company and web design and just reciprocal link schemes.