Elgoog I really don’t beleive you have anything to be worried about. In the long run your sites will climb right back up. For cross linking I keep mine under a 100 and only link to sites similiar to mine. This provides me better monitoring control over my exchanges.
Linking with someone who has 1000’s I beleive serves no purpose. Often they are unrelated sites that have multiple link directories. Also give some thought as to why you are exchanging links. For me it is a matter of giving my visitor another good online gambling resource to view.
For seo I would follow Google’s guidelines. Do not get bogged down by the many opinions out there. Simple and honest is always better.
greek39