When I was a young man the surfing web for the first time, it seemed every webmaster linked to their favorite websites. I discovered the world through the eyes of these webmasters, by moving from link-to-link, website-to-website. But then Google came along and changed all of that by using these links as a major part of their search engine algorithm. Links became votes, webmasters started to hesitate to “vote” for a website unless they got a vote back. Reciprocal links were born.
Reciprocal links changed the free-for-all aspect of the web, now when you clicked on a link; it probably is not one of the webmaster's favorite websites or some hidden gem, most likely it is payback for a vote to their website.
Google did not like this “link trading” so they started canceling out these link trading “votes”. Sites that linked back to each other started to receive less benefit for their traded links with each new algorithm tweak. This gave birth to the one way link. Links became valuable, a commodity, and webmasters tired of losing money on their sites decided to sell one way links. Now many links go to those willing to pay for the privilege.
The positive of selling one way links is clear; many great websites that would have long gone under are now making enough money to pay the bills. But the negative is that the days of hopping from site-to-site to discover the world wide web are gone. Now it is Google’s job to tell you what sites you should be looking at, today if you’re not in Google, you don’t exist.
Today, you don’t surf the web, you Google it :-(