How might Google differentiate between an artificial link exchange and partners linking to each other?

[debi_zyx]

Hi, All!

Artificial link exchanges (contacting a vaguely connected site and requesting to exchange links to increase your PR) is, as far as I know, considered an outdated, not-so-smart technique, as Google might devalue them.

Yet, for real business partners to exchange links seems to be an entirely accepted and encouraged technique.

While that would be intuitive to a human who's viewing the pages. how might Google detect when two sites that link to each other are linking because they are trusted business associates (valuable) as opposed to when they are doing a link exchange (devalued)?

Thanks!

Aviva

[Desiree-CP]

I believe one of the biggest differentiating factors to your question is relevance.  This takes into account things like anchor text, content of the link source and link destination - just to name a few.

For example, it will look natural for a cooking utensil website to link to similar verticals such as a local bakery or recipe website.  On the other hand, if your website is about the advancement of nuclear fusion, there is no real reason for you to link out with the anchor text "buy discount bath robes".  This will definitely raise a red flag on the search engine's side.

In a nutshell, a link exchange between real businesses will "work" if they are contextually relevant; those that aren't will be detected and subsequently devalued.

[debi_zyx]

Thanks, CafePress.  That certainly makes sense.   But are you saying that if I contact a bunch of site owners in my niche and offer them link exchanges (and they accept), that's really no different than linking between real business partners?  What about a partners page which links to all their partners via a logo (not much anchor text or any text, for that matter)? Is that as bad as putting a bunch of reciprocal links to niche sites on your page with no supporting text?

Everything I've read about Google recently makes me think they're smarter than that, but I'm looking for a backed-up reason.