I've Pulled Hardlink Trades - You May Want To Read This

[CaptainJSparrow]

PR 0 - So what? Penalized? How do you know?

I can never tell if I understand nothing about SEO or more than most.

Useless Warrior the "so what" is that google frowns upon you linking to sites that are penalized and may penalize you for it if you link to enough of them.
How do I know? A page that used to have pr that now does not is a pretty good sign. If they do not show up in the serps, that's another good sign.

I've been doing this for 11 years now and have never pulled links other than when the page that I was linking to either went away, re-directed, tried to install viruses, changed the page that I was linking to to an advertisement, etc. That is the case here with the exception that I am also pulling links to pages that are obviously penalized by google. IMHO the purpose of a link exchange is so that both parties benefit from it. If one party is possibly bringing the other down, then obviously that is not a fair exchange.

Along those lines, if I keep trades to a "bad neighborhood" and hurt my own site obviously I am also not doing right for the other good sites that I'm linking with.