If you have some link exchanges in your link profile that is ok, because it is natural for similar sites to link to each other, but if all of the sites that you link to also link back to you or the majority of them do this, then this does not look natural and it will most likely throw a flag to Google that you are trying to artificially increase your link count. If you just have a few links that are exchanges I would not worry about it.
Think from Google point of view. Google has its own business; search engine. They want to display quality content to user. Link exchange is manual manipulation of web site quality. Google depends on backlink to rank the quality of web page. The assumption here is that people leave back link to a webpage to give credit or it's worth to mention on their web page. But, when people exchange link, it's not depends on the quality of your or the other parties' quality that much. (Yes, you can say, I do care, but it's secondary)
Dude this is an era of giving and taking. you can hardly get a link excahge without paying. and Google totally hate this thing. Paying for marketing is prohibited by Google. thanks
hi, Because there are many links which are similar in different link exchanges so google will think that someone is trying to increase the traffic by bad means.
Google is considering the reciprocal link exchange as a result of mutual agreement, not as a vote of confidence.
The very simple reason of not accepting link exchange is that- the two websites are favoring each other and clearly telling search engines that they do not believe in gaining authority naturally.
not black and white. Essentially, some reciprocal links do have value - but only up to a degree. You're not likely to rank well for a very competitive query term solely on the basis of exchanged links.