martinibuster - 5:59 am on Dec 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

...what if the link bait is at least peripherally relevant, such as testing your knowledge about lowering the cost of widgets or identifying vintage shades of red?

Good question.

Let's assume a particular site has rubbish for content but features great link bait. Is it in the best interest of the search engines to rank the low quality content because the site features peripherally relevant link bait? Or is it in the best interest of the search engines to rank sites that attained links because of the high quality of their content?