Possible devaluing of link text - Jagger 3

[brian.mark]

Ok, so I enjoy looking at "odd" results. The search for "Exit" has always returned Disney, Yahoo, then Google for as long as I can remember. With 133M results, it's far from attainable for most of us.

Jagger 3 has a different take on it, though. Those results actually have pages with exit in the title (specifically www.php.net/exit and www.exitfest.org) listed before Google, Yahoo then Disney.

Some of the more famous bombs still work, but this one has really been stirred slightly. click here still works, as does failure and many of the others. However, some of the originals are also no longer working. Google and Microsoft aren't as evil as they used to be according to the Google SERPs.

This most certainly points to some devaluation of the anchor text in my opinion. Anyone else care to give their take?

Brian.

[MtraX]

Or they might now have a list of generic words that have special rules, like 'read more, exit, click here' etc? Allthough that's an interesting observation, nice catch.

MtraX

[sudhani]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

This most certainly points to some devaluation of the anchor text in my opinion. Anyone else care to give their take?

My experience with one of my site's is otherway round - I ran a link campaign ( small one ) with a lengthier phrase, covering 3/4 phrases. Interestingly, the site is ranking well for all the 3/4 phrases - post Jagger3. And I should not forget to mention that we "bought" a few site wide listings also.

[dburdon]

Brian,

I suspect it may actually be more to do with the respective relevance of the source pages of the inbound links.

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by dburdon

Brian,

I suspect it may actually be more to do with the respective relevance of the source pages of the inbound links.

Possible and interesting. The pages saying "click here" would for the most part say "to get Adobe Acrobat, click here" while the "exit" links don't say "for Mickey and friends, exit stage right". That could shed some light...

Maybe it's a strengthening of hilltop for relevance. I'll have to do some additional research. Thanks for your suggestion, dburdon.

Brian.

[dburdon]

Brian,

I've a rival site doing rather well in the Google SERPs post Jagger. According to Google its has just 1 IBL. When I ran a link check on MSN and Yahoo it looks like it may have no more than 8 IBLs from anywhere.

However, one of the IBLs comes from a PR5 site owned by the same company. The PR5 site is concerned with a very similar service.

It appears to me that this "relevant" link is disproportionately boosting the rival site. If it is, then "relevance" has been upweighted in the new algos.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

Possible and interesting. The pages saying "click here" would for the most part say "to get Adobe Acrobat, click here" while the "exit" links don't say "for Mickey and friends, exit stage right". That could shed some light...

Maybe it's a strengthening of hilltop for relevance. I'll have to do some additional research. Thanks for your suggestion, dburdon.

Brian.

Just to follow up with a thought...

The early stages of Jagger tended to feature more of the "trusted sites". Perhaps by removing what value a trusted site conveys to another, grouping them towards the top, this gave them a way to evaluate what sites were trusted, and a way to re-evaluate what were considered "trusted" sites.

This might explain the number of younger sites that were pushed down during the early stages.

If links (IBL's and OBL's) and their level of relevancy were a major component of the subsequent stages, re-evaluating "trusted sites" would have to be the first stage, since one can assume that a link from/to a "trusted site" would not need to relevent to carry weight as an IBL or a cause for devaluation in the case of an OBL.

Dave

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

I don't think that Google has devalued link text. But I do think that the Jagger 3 update has placed a higher degree of emphasis on the on-page text as well as the relevance of the anchor text to the actual page content.

In other words, sites that use anchor text that ties in with on page content seem to have benefitted from Jagger3.

[Deliguy]

Disney, crayola and sites like that rank high for words like exit because Google values anchor text. Adult orientated sites usually have a splash page asking if you are over the age of 18. the words enter link to the next page in their site the word exit usally links to a children related site or the search engine of preference to the adult webmaster. Add a couple hundred thousand adult sites linking to you using the words exit or under 18. You don't need those words in your site your going to rank for them anyways. If a serp change in this area proves anything its that google has not devalued text links, they've devalued anchor text.

Great find brian, I never would have noticed something like that.

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by Deliguy

Disney, crayola and sites like that rank high for words like exit because Google values anchor text. Adult orientated sites usually have a splash page asking if you are over the age of 18. the words enter link to the next page in their site the word exit usally links to a children related site or the search engine of preference to the adult webmaster. Add a couple hundred thousand adult sites linking to you using the words exit or under 18. You don't need those words in your site your going to rank for them anyways. If a serp change in this area proves anything its that google has not devalued text links, they've devalued anchor text.

Great find brian, I never would have noticed something like that.

Actually, it used to be that Disney was #1. They slipped to #5, so that is why I was saying that link text isn't as important as it used to be. But I think it is probably a relevance issue from the linking page. You're right... adult pages link there with an "exit" link, but they don't have any relevance now to the phrase "exit", so that's probably where the devaluation is coming from.

Brian.

[simonm]

Sorry but I don't think doing this particular analysis using the term 'exit' shows anything but that sites with a very high PR score well for just about anything. Google.com was 4th just for being referenced with the term 'exit' (and having a PR of 10 of course).
Anyway, it looks like everything is back to normal with Disney at the top again. Perhaps that's why I'm not seeing the effects that you mention.

[johnyfav]

I have been looking in to this as well. I'm going to throw my ramblings on to this as well.

I have a site where I wasn't ranking as well as I'd hoped for a keyword for this industry. We'll go with the one i used before "Car Motors"

On my site the section "Car motors" was actually titled "Car Motors / Car Engines".

So on every page on the left nav I had a link thats anchor text was "Car Motors / Car Engines". I did a search on that on G and I was top. So I had an idea. I'll change it in the footer navigation to 2 different links. One "Car Motors"; one "Car Engines". I never really noticed a change.

However after doing a link campaign with the anchor text "Car Motors" I found myself hitting top spot.

So I take it that anchor on site means very little yet off site IBL does?

It could be other things though!

[steve_l]

Whatever Google did probably isn't trackable because of all the factors that go into the ranking algorithm. My guess is that they implemented something that was in their patent application from a couple months ago.