Reciprocal links + hidden pages

I know this has been asked a million times but it's hard for me to get a solid answer.

I'm looking up some competitors and it seems that most of the links they have built are reciprocal. First of all, I thought that reciprocal linking wasn't supposed to work anymore? secondly, it's pretty obvious that any links they are hosting on their site are hidden from spiders. What's the deal? isn't that the most obvious trick in the book?

Hmh, you could share a page without reciprocal links to google, yahoo and bing bots and give page with links to any other bot and viewer?

Well if they're doing it successfully (your looking at the proof), then I guess it works. Not everyone checks that stuff when they exchange links.

And people do still exchange links, I do, if for nothing else than a bit of diversity.

I don't think there is any harm in hiding the links from search engines... If links are invisible to the search engine, they are not going to manipulate the rankings.... as long as they are not manipulating the rankings, its ethical.

he other reason for hiding the link from spiders is websmaster sometimes link their non-related business websites. This is done intentionally to tell the users about other business for driving some traffic.