Even though those are mostly internet dabblers with low traffic and low pagerank are they not exactly the kind of merit links that Google is looking for? Also a great indication that like minded surfers would find your content useful and interesting.

It seems to me that you might be suggesting that Google throw out the baby with the bathwater.

That’s exactly right, Nick. It is the reason why in this post I am suggesting that they should clearly state that they do not acknowledge low-value links. This is something where it is not a contest between Google and webmasters, but something where everyone could be agreeing.

Things are moving fast, and I think Google will soon judge links differently. I think there is going to be more social impact on rankings – and this is happening already.

I think that the end of this article hits spot on where it suggests to act as though the alternative algorithm was in effect. It goes back to the Eric Ward mentality where you think to yourself “if the search engines didn’t exist, would it still make sense for me to get a link from this site?” If any webmaster follows that idea, they should be guarded against any algorithm updates in my opinion.

I don’t think that Google is being 100% straight forward about the value they pass. They claim that they don’t recognize No-followed links, either anchor text or page rank…however -If you verify with Google webmaster tools, it tells you what are the “recognized inbound links”. I am looking right now at the webmaster tools account, and it is recognizing a comment on a blog that was no followed. The anchor text for that link also appears in the statistics section, under what Googlebot sees as Phrases “In external links to your site”.

If Google REALLY “does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links.” then why would that link show up in the inbound links, as well as list the anchor text in the “What Googlebot sees” section?