This obsession with self-promoting links is what makes reading sites like BoyGeniusReport and everything in the Engadget family so frustrating.
Editorial rules seem to be that any in-story link MUST be a self-reference to some keyword match inside the site and the only external link (singular) allowed is the one at the end of the article using text like "Source" or "via XYZ.com".
God I hate this on About.com. They're almost always the first result when I search for something, and every link on their page goes to another About.com page. And none of them have the information I'm searching for. I've added them (along with all of gawker media) to my hosts file.
One of the neater features I've seen Google implement is that if you click a link and then hit back within a short period, a little link shows up next to that search result that says "hide everything from about.com?"
Editorial rules seem to be that any in-story link MUST be a self-reference to some keyword match inside the site and the only external link (singular) allowed is the one at the end of the article using text like "Source" or "via XYZ.com".