I've come to the conclusion that there is far more talk about relevant backlinking having to do with "good for you" and "helping your site" and "being good links" than exactly HOW it is directly related to PageRank. Surely relevant links help with the SERPs. I'm not arguing that. But it's so freaking hard to find out how it affects your PR! Is it a dampening factor? Is it a toggle/filter? Does it even matter for PR? The reason I'm asking is because I have a web site Harlem6.com that I'm working on, that is currently just a redirect. I want to know that when I post content, this stuff will hit high in the SERPs no matter the competition. The problem is, unlike internet marketing, relevant links are fricking super hard to find with high PR (for this niche). The guy I got working on the backlinks hardly finds one a week now. However, if I find that irrelevant backlinks still count a little, than we can move the link building department forward. If not, than we have to be looking at driving traffic through external content and paid advertising only. This is a crucial move for the internet department at Entaprise Entertainment. Screw my explanation. I only need quick "how it works" answers. If I don't get answers, I'm just going to run an experiment and keep it secret(because then I know this stuff will take off like wildfire and eventually get to the software engineers at Google...cuz Google hates grey hat SEO). If you have info, it would be great for you to cite your sources. How much do irrelevant links count towards PageRank by default?