Well, it may be an old "twist," actually. But I only began seeing it this year. Likely I've been sucked in before, and never noticed. But the reason for bringing it up now, is that I was hit by this "twist" four times last month. It goes like this.

Somebody writes a very good message explaining they've added a link to my site. And would like me to link to them. I get lots of these every month, and discard most immediately because the presentation demonstrates it wouldn't be a good idea. I don't even have to visit the site to see it's so.

But these four, I did check out. For they were, as stated, well written. In each case, I found a very nicely annotated link to my site, just where I was invited to look.

Okay. Back to the home page. Let's see if the site looks okay. Yep. Not bad. At least some of my visitors would be interested. So sure, let's go for it.

Wait one! Where's the link from the home page to those lovely links I saw? Uhmmmmmm. Nowhere to be found. One site even had a site map. But it contained no link to the link directory.

So here's a fellow (1 of 4, remember) who will gladly swap links with you, a fellow who will never send you even one visitor. The link he wants in exchange, goes to his home page. There's just no way to get to the outbound links from there. So he gets hits from my site and I get zip from him. And link checking software would find the link still in place.

So if you receive what appears to be a good offer for a link swap, take the time to visit the site and see if visitors could ever find that lovely link to you. Four of these in one month is a record for me. But hey, maybe it's a "new" thing that's catching on!