Have to agree with Randy.
Reading the Google forums, it was clear that they would try and catch out 3-way, reciprocal and unrelated links eventually. So when I started linking, I took the radical strategy of building a links page that I thought my visitors would appreciate – one that linked to complementary and authority sites, many of which don’t (and probably won’t ever) link back to me.
For a while, that seemed pointless, but the recent Google algorithm tweak has seen me ranking in the top 20 for most search terms, and visitor numbers have trebled.
The Gooner is right, of course – if the majority of your traffic comes from referrals then recip links are great. But if you rely on search engines then you’ve got to play by their rules.
And Google’s rules are fairly simple – build sites for users, not search engines.