tedster - 10:14 pm on Jun 23, 2009 (gmt 0)

I like the idea, too. Quality of external linking could be a sitewide factor - possibly folded into the trust equation. Some patents have talked about monitoring the quality of advertising a site runs, so why not the free links, too!

This would also play into Matt Cutts' enigmatic message that Google's algo does include factors that reward external linking.

However, would that automatically mean that being on the receiving end of a link from such a site is worth more to the target site? Something about neightborhoods on the webgraph comes to mind.