Why Text Links on Top Not the Best?

I read somewhere...

[hulahoop]

I've just recently read a book on search engine visibility and it states that:
at the top of a page is not the best place to put text links because it is often the fist text links that the search engines sees.

It doesn't go on to say why it isn't good to do that?

I have made my navigation links, text links on top button looking backgrounds for a lighter weight.

Any idea why? TQ

[caveman]

Hard to get this without the context in which it was said. Are they referring to internal links, or external links?

Basically, the SE's read the code of the page top down. Higher up it is, the more important the SE's tend to think it is (speaking in very general terms). That goes for links and text. There are all sorts of caveats to that however.

If I want to give a link a lot of prominence, both in terms of SEO importance and likelihood of user clickthrough, then yes it goes in higher and/or more prominent places.

Seems to me it's up the the site owner to determine what gets top billing, and why.

BTW, one of the caveats I mentioned above is that nav tends to get identified and treated as such, and weighed by the SE's accordingly.

My 2 cents anyway.