Google penalizes when irrelevant sites link to irrelevant sites, because this type of linking makes site visitors be unsatisfied - and unsatisfied visitors are bad for Google.
That is why when you join different link farms and pyramids that automatically place your link on all possible sites in the world - surely this has bad effect.
With Auto Link Exchanger (the tool that is behind this service, its technological base) finds relevant sites, sites that have nice
PR and are nicely indexed by Google.
What is automated is the pile of all manual works like copy, paste, then take this link and its info and copy and paste again - routine. This is automated and actually Google sees no difference if you do that manually or autmate this job. What cares is the relevancy of sites - and here you don't have a problem.
Plus, you should check if your links are on the sites-partners. Doing that manually is very painful, the tool automatically checks and if no link is found deletes their link from your directory or disables it for a while or leaves untouched (if you are so kind, though I would not advise to tolerate that :bigstick: )
I agree with Google that those who hurry up to put as much links as possible on all sites ruin value of searches. But the root of the problem here is not automation, but irrelevancy. And wise automation is great. You can read the
strategy and copy it manually and get the same results. But I think it is wiser to automate the jobs that can be done by programs. The whole Internet is about automation.
And this strategy gives results, 2nd position in MSN, and position 31 in Google. And this is due to 1 month efforts - not bad. So, link building is great, but need to make it properly. And top Internet marketers build links too. Do you think they do all that with their hands?
And if you want to learn why Google will never prohibit link building, you can subscribe to
free educational course here.