Anchor Text - A Pandora’s Box
If text is King then anchor text is Queen, put them together and you’ve got the Kingdom of Google. In creating their Kingdom, Google has unleashed to the world an effective way to manipulate search results. And is unwittingly promoting SPAM that searchers are not looking for.
Fans of natural organic search engine optimization are often obsessed with the importance of text content. It is all too easy for them to forget that Google became the dominant search engine by an introduction of a gimmick.
Jack LaLanne in the natural health world has a famous quote.
“Exercise is king and diet is queen; put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.”
In the world of SEO, on-site optimizing factors are King and off-site factors are Queen; put them together and you’ve got the Kingdom of Google.
Text is King
Natural organic search engine optimization says that text content should be King of all the on-site factors of SEO. Central to all white hat SEO efforts is the concept that what is actually on the webpage should determine the relevancy of search results. This is the way it was, before Google entered the scene. And, to hear some SEOs talk you would still think that text is all that there is to ranking well in the SERPs. Wrong!
Anchor Text is Queen
Google dominated the search engine market by introducing the concept that off-site factors should play an equal or even greater role in placing well in the SERPs. Certainly pagerank was a concept that Google was first to implement in a search engine. But, they managed to open up a pandora’s box by letting webpages actually place in the top ten of the SERPs for factors that are NOT on the respective webpages.
Chief of these factory is anchor text, or the keyword text, that is used by other webpages to point to a given page.
The Kingdom of Google
In the Kingdom of Google, how other webpages point to a given webpage is just as important, if not more important, than what is actually on the written page.
This makes Google beyond a shadow of a doubt broken. Cause when I search for content, I expect to find that content on everything that Google serves up in their search results. And, when I end up wasting my time looking at a webpage that doesn’t even contain the text that I am looking for, well John H. Gohde just tends to get very annoyed. If not downright angry.
I have never once thanked Google for wasting my time. Nor, for being smarter/dumber than me.
The Pandora’s Box of Anchor Text
Not only does this make Google search results less relevant than they easily could be, it has opened up the door to an entire area of search engine manipulation that they themselves have unwittingly unleashed to the world.
Google, what is your problem? There is absolutely no justification for enhancing the ranking of SPAM over more relevant search results. Kindly, make content King as it naturally should be.
- Natural Organic Search Engine Optimization
- Text is King - Eye Candy Doesn’t Impress Google
- The Importance of PageRank is Overrated
July 13, 2008 at 7:32 am
I have noticed Google adding their “show map” feature to certain webpages in their search listings with the wrong street address, since they apparently think that accurate street address information should be more about how outsiders have voted than upon reality.
July 13, 2008 at 7:38 am
In January, 2007, Google wrote an algorithm which reduced the impact of many prank Google bombs, where people linked to pages which did not contain the phrase used in the links.
In my opinion, the entire concept of off-page factors having an impact upon search listings is just plain stupid.
Google needs to considerably tone it down some more.