Links Companies

There is quite a bit of talk lately about Google and other search engines penalizing sites that use Links Companies to obtain or list links to your site.

Does anyone know the details of the actual facts here ? Obviously, no business wants to be banned by search engines for lack of understanding.

I can understand a product like "Zeus" possibly being a problem if you send unsolicited e-mail to websites asking for reciprocal links, but, what about companies like LinksManager.com ? They do not send e-mails to anyone, they leave it up to the owner of the website to do this. What they do is create a page for your website that lists links you find in an organized way. That seems to be harmless, or are the engines/directories thinking something else ?

Would both of these products/companies be on the problem list for Google etc. ?

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

Ken Black
http://www.golfrevelations.com