Express Link or Spam Exchange?

Someone posted to my blog today about ExpressLinkExchange under the name Shanon Sandquist, who appears to have been quite busy lately.

Hey, this is an awesome blog you've
got here!! I'm definitely going to
bookmark it! By the way, I found a
awesome site that has similar kind of
link exchange kind of stuff! If you get
time, check it out.

www.ExpressLinkExchange.com

Posted by Shanon Sandquist to IncrediBILL's Random Rants at 10/06/2007 1:03 AM

Normally I would think it's a bogus name on one of those off topic blog posts but that name shows up in the WhoIs for ExpressLinkExchange so it's either the real person openly posting the same crap all over the place or someone trying to give them some reputation management issues.

whois expresslinkexchange.com

directNIC makes this information available "as is", and does not guarantee
its accuracy.

Registrant:
Homeworkers
2084 West, 12974 South
Riverton, UT 84065
US

Domain Name: EXPRESSLINKEXCHANGE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Sandquist, Shanon Shanon3@Walla.com
2084 West, 12974 South
Riverton, UT 84065
US

Technical Contact:
Sandquist, Shanon Shanon3@Walla.com
2084 West, 12974 South
Riverton, UT 84065
US

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.MPENET.COM 65.222.14.2
NS2.MPENET.COM 65.222.14.3

Hey, it looks like a great service, what could be wrong with signing up for links and making free money?

Right on the home page "...increase a website's traffic, link popularity and search engine ranking..." and there's even a directory of member sites!

Here's the best part on the FAQ page:

5. Does ExpressLinkExchange.com abide by the major search engine guidelines?

Yes, it does. The ExpressLinkExchange.com Link Exchange service is fully compliant with all of the major search engine guidelines and standards. We do not promote "blackhat" techniques such as cloaking, hidden text, or the use of doorway pages in order to artificially manipulate the search engine results. The ExpressLinkExchange.com Link Exchange service will help naturally boost your website's link popularity in the same manner that any typical manual link exchange campaign would. The only difference with our system is that it is fully automated. In addition, we provide our members with helpful articles to educate them on how to properly optimize their web pages for increased search engine ranking. Click here for more details on this topic.

Interesting point of view because the Google Webmaster Guidelines expressly says:

Quality guidelines - basic principles

Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

OK, which one of them would you believe?

Well let's all sign right up so we'll all be in a members list Google can easily track, good idea!

Sounds like a plan to me!