austtr - 9:46 pm on Mar 25, 2011 (gmt 0)

But links from authority sites still get a lot of weight

But the number of these that are "freely given" as a percentage of the total links that get generated is like comparing a grain of sand to Mt Everest.

As fewer and fewer web owners/developers are willing to link out from their quality sites, fewer and fewer sites are going to have this indicator that Google needs to determine ranking.

Hence the OP