stuff surrounding anchor text

my question is kind of technical. I don't think it's been asked here before.

wondering about the stuff around the anchor text. is there a preference as far as grammar is concerned? do the search engines look at the grammar used? The question is difficult to describe, so I will give an example:

according to http://www.example.com, there are many people that....

hire http://www.example.com to solve the issue...


The differences that I want to point out:

The first one, it says "according to" that means you are referring to the website as an information site. "According to" this site, blah blah.

the second one seems more "commercial" because it says "hire" right before the website. so the author's intention was to promote a site, not informational.

so you see what I mean? does it matter what surrounds the anchor text, or a link is a link?

I think the key is to use a little bit of everything, isn't it? The more variations, the better, in my opinion - especially if they're coming from authority sites.