It seems that every time Google update its algorithm, it reduces the effect on ranking. Up to now, i think there is no practical effect except that the opponent has a much higher page rank than you and your industry are closely related.
Yes, it is time to do this very carefully and naturally, SEO minus vote from good sites would be difficult
Sometimes I think Google doesn't drop sites keywords ranking after running such updates like the one recently done Penguine update. Actually websites admin/webmaster shows 200% care and they start removing links from their sites and this way websites keywords ranking of Party 'B' sites start going down & down.......... So I suggest not to worry if you have done WhiteHat SEO on your website coz Google itself appreciate WH method. Good Luck guys
I think link exchanges are legit for blogs cagepotato.com is a good example, look at its blogroll and it ranks first page for "mma news"
Link exchanges will still help with your rankings I believe. The key now is going to be mixing up your anchor texts and not using the same anchor text on every single link you exchange.
Link exchange is really helpful. Now days google has become very strong and every day we can see something change on the Google so i think most thing is that we should have to wary and update with google..