Don't bother with automated link programs unless you only care about MSN

We found a way to get to the top of MSN very easily by using a program that gets you about 4000 backlinks measured by MSN within a few months.

The service asks you to post a link directory on your site that they populate - and then you get back links from about 5000 other sites using the same program instantly. It takes about 3 months for all of the backlinks to start appearing in a link popularity test. We found the results are really good in MSN, but Google seems to ignore the links altogether. The sites we used it on got good rankings in MSN but no movement in Google at all.

I am starting to think that it actually hurts the Google ranks because Google is smart enough to know that the majority of the sites are 'non-trustworthy' and therefore your links to them hurt you, and their links to you hurt you.

We are taking it off the sites that we are currently using it on and continuing with the more 'white hat' method of manually searching for and requesting good quality, relevant links. It is definitely a lot slower and more labour intensive, but if Google is what you want (which we do) I can't see any other way at the moment.