Is link exchange a waste of time?

[gmsj]

In my opinion, the exchange of links is not at all a waste of time

[palomavictoria]

Links exchange does bring in a good stream of traffic if you partner up with a niche relevant site.You can gain more PR if the reciprocating link has more PR and less link on the page your link would appear. If its the other way around, you lose more PR than what you actually gain.

[jeth]

Lol, i read this thread quite sometime back and came back several times hoping to hear the results stephan might have gathered. =(
Anyhow, been seeing Le activity picking up lately across various forums...

[inok]

Link exchanges may be a waste of time with other search engines, but for Google they are required. In fact, Google search engineers like Matt Cutts even recommend the acquisition of incoming links.

[gtku]

I think google has a way to give more weight to what they deem to be naturally occurring link as opposed to a link trade.

[RickyG]

Part of the PANDA algo is to drop "low level" links.

[AdrianC]

I'm sure backlinks are useful, but link exchanges... I don't know. I've been seeing a lot of 3 way link exchanges lately, maybe those are better.

[jeffreyrogers]

In the event you get site listed in top five & do not use any keywords meta tags & links great it works for you but it does not always work.

I see sites with no rank at all or even meta tags rank in top five sometimes. I do think sites that use the most searched terms require lovely page rank & lots of links. Smaller niches & keyword combination sites that have nothing on them sometimes show up number.

[shellens]

Hmmm, well depends on how you are exchanging the links and also with who.... That's way its calling link building .

[ngocnghechvn]

link exchange is still a big factor to help you rank!