I think their target is more the sort of sites with hudereds or thousands of link exchanges, especially from unrelated sites. Like a PR6 xbox blog linking to medical and insurance websites. Also link farms and sites setup just to sell hudereds of links on one page.

From what you have told me here – you are not participating in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking. You are not using programs.

Google never asked you to delete your links. Geez, take a chill pill will you.

Over the past four years my site has been online, I have exchanged links with hundreds of sites. I dont use any programs or softwares that force me to link with other sites. I make link decisions on my own and in natural progression.

I have top 5 rankings for all of my keywords. I receive more traffic every month from the link exchanges than I do from google. I will not be deleting my links pages because of all of this paranoia about regarding reciprocal linking.

People, if you link for your end users and not for seo purposes, you will do fine. the search engines dont want you using these services that force lots of links to your site in a short period of time.

its not right for any search engine to say how I will get links to my site. I will intend to keep linking with other sites (some reciprocal, some not) when the link is useful for my traffic.

Gene me either.

Carl your blogroll might get you banned if you are participating in link schemes.

I’ve been looking at a lot of blogs lately. The only ones I add are ones that I like. I never link just because someone has asked me to. Most often, my links come from bloggers who have commented on my blog or from comments they’ve made on other blogs. Linking back to me is not a required. In fact, I’d rather that people only link to my pages if they like what I am doing.