A colleague passed me this recent discussion on Webmaster World which discusses how a lot of SEO experts think that 3 Way link exchange can now be detected algorithmically.

3 way links were developed by the SEO industry in order to create an alternate linking strategy when two-way (or reciprocal) links were ‘devalued’. The idea was that by creating a triangular structure, the links were undetectable. The Webmaster World discussion would seem to imply that more recent thinking is that they are still found. What it highlights perhaps more is that three way links were specifically created to ‘game’ the search engines, and perhaps that has made them a target for detection.

Aside from the fact that the reciprocal link is not as dead as people think, what I have seen more recently is an increase in link exchange requests that are three way, but offer a poor link in exchange for a quality one.

e.g.

Dear Webmaster

I know you are interested in boosting traffic blah blah.
Please add my link to your site www.example.com with
the following information:

Target link text
URL
Description of the site which is in the same niche as client

In return I will link to you from:

www.somerandomdirectory/maybe-related-category and/or
some-blog-or-other.blogspot.com

Thanks

SEO Company for example.com

Er, sorry, where is the benefit for my client in that? We give away a good quality link from a nicely related site in their niche and you give us a link from some random directory or a blog that’s not even indexed by Google?

When I’m trying to gain a good quality link for a client this in N

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