Tim Grice published a summary of a study he completed named Anchor Text Has Lost Its Edge. Let me summarize in bullet format:

Building a strong domain is far more important than anchor text.Get links to all your pages, not just home page.Get links from a diverse set of sitesToo many sitewide links don’t helpUse of same anchor text for all your links over and over again doesn’t helpMake sure many of your links use your brand name when linking to you

After summarizing the study, I don’t think most link building experts would find these concepts new. But the thing here is, as he said:

So he has a lot of data to back this, he said.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.