probably why the link to their site is "rel=nofollowed" this make the link, just a link - and if their goal is anything but "sharing information" (I.e. ranking in google..) this does nothing for him.
And even Google may count them for something -- I'm sure 'nofollow' is part of their analysis, but I doubt it's equivalent to 'the link wasn't even there'. That'd be throwing away information, and Google didn't get where they are by throwing away bits. (I would guess the 'nofollow' discount varies by site.)