TextLinkAds claiming Google counts no-follow links

TextLinkAds - no doubt worried about losing sales in light of Google’s Pronouncement of Doom for Links of the Paid Variety - has posted on their blog about an experiment which seems to reveal that Googlebot does indeed follow no-follow links and allow you to rank for their anchor text terms.

The experiment worked like this: Ben Fisher wrote on the SpiderMan 3 game. Then he commented on related blogs with a link back to his post with the misspelled anchor text "piderMan 3" and a nofollow, and soon thereafter his site landed on Google’s page 1 for "piderMan 3" (and some other terms).

After reading the comments, which include what other people have observed in their own tests, I’m inclined to think no-follow links do leak a bit of juice for the anchor text, but it’s probably pretty weak compared to regular links. It might all depend on the trustworthiness (according to Google) that the site sending you the link has.