Seems to me that AV derives the top 10 from a mixture of: 1. Backlinks
2. Anchor text
3. On site relevant terms
4. Click popularity (freshness)
The last, 4th, criteria seems to have the least impact. I see a number of sites not freshed that still place well because of the first 3.
GG said that AV freshens any site clicked. If this is true and some weight is given to those sites then I think this is advantageous. It at least shows the site's title/description was seen as relevant and therefore should be given a little boost.....reminds me of the DirectHit algo which wasn't all bad, just too slow to update.
Maybe Google should learn from what AV are doing?
