that's not precisely what Matt said, Bill. What he said was that he "wouldn't expect links from press release web sites to benefit your rankings". I think we all know that a backlink in a PR sitting on PRWeb isn't worth much - but if that PR gets picked up by the NYT, it's a different story. As for seoconsult's "test", I call bullshit. I see it as a classic case of confusing correlation with causation. The fact that they grossly misquoted Matt (they're in good company... so, apparently, did MOST of the industry) just makes it worse.