Probably not. Some search engines don't obey this meta tag but you never know. Its also a sign that the webmaster is crap or they are doing some other dodgy things.
I have noticed msn doesn't.. If anybody uses nofollow in the meta tag, it says the crawler not to follow the links in the particular page.. So if if you want a crawlable link , better not to have a reciprocal deal with these sites.
Yeah, I have seen quite a few people using these unethically lately, assigning outgoing links in reciprocal exchanges with the nofollow attribute. It basically lets them get a one way link to the others expense imo. Then again, the big SE's seem to be moving away from Reciprocal linking anyways
Yeah, infortunately, I see more and more webmasters using this trick. As wel as many other tricks like NOINDEX meta-tag, robots.txt sections, java-scripts, tricky HTML comments, etc... As for reciprocal linking... I don't know what makes you think so, Savant --except for the fact that Google engineers told you that - but, remember, they work for Google - and their task is to make their results be more *organic* - so they may simply use this info to artificially lower the number of people who use reciprocal linking. Well, this is just one of my silly guesses - and everything what I wrote above is probably B.S. - who knows? But at least my reciprocal links work fine (if not to say more) for me
I haven't heard anything about the SEs devaluing reciprocal links, so I'd be interested in the source of this information. I know that they're typically valued less than one-way inlinks, but I believe this has always been the case. Sam
The source was from a discussions on WebmasterRadio.fm a few nights ago (I believe with Matt Cutts, but I came in late and left early, so don't quote me). It was definantly someone with google, and from what I understood from what was said, Google is trying harder to not pay as much attention to Reciprocal linking. I probably took this out of context when I said the big SE's... I am just assuming that MSN will follow Google's example =P I am not going to say that my comment is 100% accurate, simply because I dont have any concrete evidence of this (unless I can find the show somewhere). Ill take a look around to see if I can get any further confirmation.
Google discounts certain types of reciprocal linking. If you do reciprocal linking with quality "relevant" sites, it is a good thing. If you do recips with anybody no matter what, then you're headed for trouble. Google will not penalize you for having a "categorized directory" of VERY related sites for the enrichment of your website visitors experience. Trouble starts if your directory of recip partners starts looking like a link exchange system or a link farm. I would recommend staying away from "footprintable" link exchange systems or programs. Be original and make your own directory... Don't take the easy way out.
Can't but agree that using "footprintable" programs is not the best way for SEO. Moreover, thare are some good tools on the market that leave no footprints and allow you to manage your link partners and link directory easily.