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You can view the Open Site Explorer index update schedule here: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule The next update is on Feb. 29th.

You're right, I should not have panicked.  I've got my placements back now. What's more confusing is that my website design and local county now appear better than before and I've not got that keyword on my page anymore. Anyone care to explain?

Different IPs, especially from different networks, is one way that engines determine how related the linker is to the linkee. It's not a foolproof thing (especially in this day and age of cloud hosting, where you could have sites around the globe easily and cheaply). Still, it's better than nothing so SEOMOZ kindly tells you your IP diversity.

Very nicely put

This may be the video, Matt Cutts said, the #1 mistake people make in SEO is crawlability He states that crawability biggest step, then great content after thet marketing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6xxcQdAHbI Bing also suggests crawlability is important. Listening to Duane Forrester from Bing he often mentions trust in relation to SEO violations. The wrong use of redirects and canonical tags, errors and wrong dates in sitemaps, and other violations all lead to a loss of trust. This is becoming even more important with microdata. A simple html error can give completely different meaning to the snippets. Up until now the bots had to find the content and work out if it is visible to the user, but now with microdata content is arranged in objects and being able to find and crawl these objects mean that you need to be free of violations

When you say you: "Adding us to local business directories" How many did you do?  Which ones did you add your small business to? I don't know about the UK, but there's a ton of directories and sites depending on the niche/vertical you can submit to.  While they don't necessarily create better organic rankings, they can help build your PR + if done correctly help your google places page rise.  It's one of the reasons why we were able to move to the top for the main phrase for our business locally in maps. What's your site? I just searched "local seo uk" and this popped up: http://www.seo-doctor.co.uk/local-seo-20-citation-places.html  Are you guys in all of these?  There looked to be 2-3 other posts about local seo in the uk. That's the thing I love about search.  You just have to do it in order to learn more.

Will it cause harm?  Not likely.  If Google suspects the links aren't kosher, it will probably just ignore (or "devalue") the links. As to whether it is a shady or manipulative practice - debatable.  From my perspective, I don't quite see how it is all that different from a company linking to its partners, suppliers, or customers.  The link represents a business relationship, and that relationship has value.  If I have a client in the position to get these kinds of links, for me it's a no brainer - get 'em.  At the very worst, they have no impact SEO-wise, but help with branding and referral traffic.  Google's perspective may differ. As to why the practice might not be working out so well for you - do you run linkbuilding campaigns for the websites you develop?  Does anybody?  Do many of the websites share a C class address? A bunch of links from websites with weak backlink profiles or the same C class addresses won't take you very far. BONUS - a few linkbuilding tactics guaranteed to work: Submitting your website to high quality, relevant directories Running a guest blogging campaign on a number of influential web design blogs Creating TRULY engaging and unique content and promote it via social media