Google: Longer Anchor Text Gives More Context

[CAPTCHAFORUM]

In a recent webmaster hangout, Google employee John Mueller talked about the differences between longer and shorter anchor text links.

The question to Mueller sounded like this:

“Do you handle anchor text that contains many words differently than anchor text that contains only two words? I mean, do you give those two words more weight when you compare them to 7-8 word anchor text? For example, "cheap shoes" and "you can buy cheap shoes here."

According to Mueller, Google doesn't necessarily treat longer or shorter anchor text differently in terms of ranking. However, using more words gives the search engine more context on the page to which the link leads. The broader context can have an indirect effect on rankings. The more context Google has on a page, the more efficiently it can rank it for relevant queries.

Therefore, the most important thing is to understand that Google recognizes and processes all anchor text and uses this information to understand what the page is about.

“I don’t think we are doing anything special about the length of the anchor text. We rather use this anchor text as a way to get more context across individual pages. Sometimes a longer anchor text can give us a little more information, and sometimes it's just a bunch of different keywords. "

Therefore, in this case it is impossible to say that something is good and something is bad, Mueller noted. It depends on the specific situation.

"I wouldn't say shorter anchor text is better or worse, it's just a different context."

You can listen to the question to Mueller and his answer to it in the video below:

 

[85go]

long anchor text has always been and will be good