Since Google's search engine is based on their page ranking algorithm (which basically ranks your site higher depending on how many other sites are linking to you) it would seem to make sense to take advantage of link exchange programs. These offer to place links back to your site from thousands of other sites in exchange for you placing links to other sites on yours.

However, theysimply don't work. Firstly, Google takes into account the quality of the sites that are linking to you in its algorithm and so exchanges can actually negatively impact on your ranking as very few 'quality' sites use them. Secondly, Google has got wise to these 'schemes' and can in fact black list your site for doing this.

So beware!