Google Webmaster Central says that they’ve begun reporting full anchor text for links back to your site. The Webmaster Central Blog writes,
“For quite a while, you’ve been able to see a list of the most common words used in anchor text to your site. This information is useful, because it helps you know what others think your site is about. How sites link to you has an impact on your traffic from those links, because it describes your site to potential visitors. In addition, anchor text influences the queries your site ranks for in the search results.
Now we’ve enhanced the information we provide and will show you the complete phrases sites use to link to you, not just individual words. And we’ve expanded the number we show to 100. To make this information as useful as possible, we’re aggregating the phrases by eliminating capitalization and punctuation. For instance, if several sites have linked to your site using the following anchor text:
Site 1 “Buffy, blonde girl, pointy stick”
Site 2 “Buffy blonde girl pointy stick”
Site 3 “buffy: Blonde girl; Pointy stick.”We would aggregate that anchor text and show it as one phrase, as follows: “buffy blonde girl pointy stick”"
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has a good rundown of what anchor text is and why it matters in search. As he points out, knowing what text people are using in reference to your site is helpful for any number of reasons – know your most popular content, spot any “googlebombs”, understand how your site ranks, etc.
For example, the top five anchor text terms for searchviews are:
- searchviews
- searchviews dispatches and discussions on the search engine
- search views
- http www searchviews com
- www searchviews com
Ha. So much for aggregating like terms. Still, this is a helpful little tool.
Read More:
- Google Shows Datalicious Anchor Text (WebProNews)
- A Quick Word About Googlebombs (Google Webmaster Central Blog)
- Webmaster Central Showing Increased Backlinks (Webmaster World)
