Hissingsid - 8:45 am on Nov 12, 2011 (gmt 0)

There was some talk years ago about Google disregarding links from certain areas of a page, the footer for example. I wonder if that has expanded to any in the page template, ie that are repeated on every/large numbers of pages in a site.

Google may not count no-follow links in the algo but it certainly uses the anchor text in links from certain highly trusted sites. Do your own tests.