I won't go into specific reasoning, but am sensing that google is giving some sort of positive attribution for "authority" in the algo to a site simply from the domain name being mentioned in the content on an external indexed page. (by authority, i mean strengthening the sites ability to rank for terms that exist in the site and its ability to give authority to other sites. Essentially, what we view PR to represent although it doesn't actually...) ...only when the domain name is fully intact such as: example.com, www.example.com, http://example.com, http://www.example.com... In this case, a hyperlink would cause the algo to treat the text differently... Perhaps they've been experimenting with this for a little while now.... Perhaps its not actually happening. Does this sound ridiculous?