I've been reading posts here and on SEO chat about Jagger possibly penalizing link exchange programs... such as those massive ones RE agents deploy... going forward, knowing about the possibility that jagger had to do with this, how many here will still use reciprical linking as an off-page optimization strategy?
The programs might be risky. But its not recips only. It might be something in the link but the recip thing is not the problem. I have about 20 sites. 12 of them are having heavy links like the coop. Most are affected with Jagger. 8 of them are doing as good as they did before I add the coop. get found on old keywords. About 4 are new websites, they only have recips, and nothing big but get found suddenly. And pretty good as well. By only having manual recips. 4 others are old websites. They are doing good as well. About 75% of all their links are manually requested. the 25% other procent are links that people just added after my website got off the ground. These 4 doing great as well. I dont say the coop is the problem. But somehow Google doesnt like advertising around websites too much anymore. I got the feeling that if a link is placed somewhere content that is related to it, it has positive effects. A link that is placed on the bottom of a non-related website, has jagger effects, it fluctuates.
I found that a lot of old recip BL's disappeared entirely. I would say age was more of a factor than them being recip.
Age of link has always played a big part in G's algo. I think G has been gradually giving bl's more value as they age. In some cases about 9-12 months until the BL's start to cont in any effect.