CSS and PageRank

[ryanep]

Hello there,
I've been reading a few posts about how Google and other search engines may / may not read CSS external style sheets. I would just like to get a bit of feedback from you guys if search engines are able to take into account these CSS links.

The reason I ask this is that I have a link exchange request and the other party prefers to use this:

<span class="adfooter"><span style="position: absolute; top: 1560px; left: 300px"><a href="http://example.com">Example Site</a></span>

rather than the normal:

<a href="http://example.com">Example Site</a>

Can the experts here confirm that I the benefit of both of these links are the same, or are there certain differences in how search engines, especially Google handle this.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Ryan

[edited by: tedster at 4:37 pm (utc) on Nov. 17, 2009]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

Google certainly can read that link, although the mark-up is a bit bizarre. The only potential issue I see is that the link is pushed way down the page, and Google sometimes seems to discount the value of links toward the footer - at least somewhat.

[ryanep]

Thats great. Once again, thanks tedster for your help.