Say, for example... I have a contextual link on a related PR4 website page with no other outbound links. I also have a contextual link on a realted PR4 forum page with no other outbound links. Does Google give less weight to the forum link (can it even see my forum link is from a forum!?)
No. To Google a Web page is a Web page; it's as simple as that. And as far as links on forums are concerned, there's no need to devalue them - forums by their very nature tend to have a BOATLOAD of external links anyway, so there's going to be little, if any, benefit given to those links anyway due to the sheer numbers present on a typical forum thread. HOWEVER, that being said, Google does (if their alleged Manual Review Handbook is to be believed) consider a healthy active forum to be a sign that the site hosting the forum is legitimate (waits to see how long it takes for the pundits here to twist that all out of proportion).
Thanks Dan. I'll see how my current link building strategy goes. So far so good though. Link farm forum? By the way - i'm glad to say the catalogue url directory system went ok with the rewrites & redirects.