Anchor tags may not be as important as I thought!

Hi Clint,

Well unless google doesn't rank it at all, they have to rank it for something (pun intended).

If none of the links have anchor text, what do they have to go on?

a) the domain name

b) the title tag

c) the body text

All three have only one element - something.

There is presumeably no other page on the web that is as totally focused on, and relevant for - something.

But, it would be faulty logic to draw any opinion on whether anchor tags are less or more important because of this.

What we know is that google has to try and establish what a page is about, and one thing's for sure - there is absolutely no confusion about what the main 'theme' of the page is.

Just my opinion, but I don't think domain names are that crucial in many circumstances, but when it's a single shortish dictionary word (probably plenty of type in traffic) which is one that gets used frequently in everyday conversation (unlike say, plasticised or superficially) then I think that it carries a fair bit more weight when every other clue for the search engines leads to the same word.

Also, even though the anchor text is just the url, in this case (domain matches the only keyword) the main part of the anchor text is the keyword - 9 of the 16(20 if www.) characters are the keyword.

A great explanation Roger.

Google has to weigh up all the factors of which anchor text for links pointing to that page is just one.

It's unlikely there are any other pages with a significant anchor text usage of the word 'something' to any of the other pages either, so Google would have to work out how to rank the page using the other factors.

Edit - I have to admit though, it is pretty wierd when you look at it !!

Tim