Sphinn Home » Google SEO
Avatar Went Hot: July 5, 2008 - 7:07 am
Posted By: ViperChill 47 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.seo-scientist.com)
Category: Google SEO
So, in order to test the theory, i picked two sites that sometimes double as my furry lab animals and set them up so that site A links to site B with two links using different anchor texts. The phrases appeared only on a site A, they were not to be found anywhere on site B and if that site was to rank for any of those two phrases, it would be only due to the anchor text of the links pointing from the site A.
9 Comments     

Comments

from Halfdeck 47 days ago #
Votes: 2 | Vote:
+ -

Nice .. I'd like to see more discussions based on experiments like this instead of listening to you or myself spew personal opinion based on hunches.

from neyne 47 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

thanks Halfdeck. That is exactly why i don't like arguments from incredulity. "Doesn't seem reasonable" shoud always be followed by "but it should be tested".

from MariosAlexandrou 46 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
+ -

I say boooo on the closing teaser paragraph :-) A few of us experimenter types should get together, make a list of things to test, and then split them amongst us. We could cover more ground in a shorter period of time and avoid duplicate efforts.

from neyne 46 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

@Marios Yeah I feel bad about it, but it was a middle ground between not telling at all or sharing with the ones that i know will not abuse it.

Huge thumbs up for the sharing idea. I know that there are things like that in some of the close forums (DavN sometimes writes about participating in things like that) but nothing I am a part of. So, maybe we can do that in private or something...

On a different note, can't believe this thing went hot on 4th of July weekend! W00T! I was sure it will not be looked upon at least until Tuesday...

Thanks to everyone sphinning and to Viper for submitting it in the first place... amazing community here

from hugoguzman 46 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

Great work, Neyne! We've figured out a few ways to circumvent this issue, but I would love to hear about the technique you referenced at the end of this post.

from aimClear 46 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

It's sharing like this which makes Sphinn such a valuable resource to our community. Thanks very much for making the test public and GOOD GRAB ViperChill.

from DanThies 41 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

Having done extensive testing on this, we do occasionally get results where it appears that a second link is passing anchor text, but in the vast majority of cases it looks exactly like Neyne's result.

You have to do this kind of testing with more than one page, because you don't know effect what screen scrapers, RSS feeds, etc. may have - in other words, you can't see every link, and you can't rule out some sort of pollution, especially in a one-off test.

Based on the evidence I have seen, the only reliable behavior is the first link passing anchor text.

from neyne 41 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

@DanThies Point taken. I am definitely trying to diversify the types of sites that I perform my tests on.

from DanThies 40 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

You're the first tester I've seen (at least in public) addressing the need to test with different types of keywords. The reason why we launched a thousand tests on this was because we didn't have confidence that made up words (floblag glifflestop) that don't appear on the page would be handled the same way as real words.

Search engines have to be looking for better ways to handle anchor text - does a link with the word "this" really add anything useful from the search engines' perspective?


Log in to comment or register here.

Top 10 Most Sphunn
In What's New

  1. Top 5 Legitimate SEO Techniques to ... (18)
  2. Why We Share Content: Survey Report (17)
  3. Domain Name Gaming: Tricking Engine... (16)
  4. 5 FireFox Extensions to Enhance Lin... (16)
  5. Blumenthal & Mihm Jump Over Buildin... (14)
  6. 24 Ways for SEO Detractors to Prove... (14)
  7. Google Reader Adds Friends List, Sh... (13)
  8. How many businesses really ‘get’ th... (13)
  9. How to Analyze a Page HTML Semantic... (12)
  10. Domains Are NOT Real Estate, KW Res... (12)

Latest Comments

Search Marketing Expo

Save the date for:
• SMX China (Nanjing) - Sept. 23-24
• SMX Stockholm - Sept. 23-24: See who's speaking or register now.
• SMX East (New York City) - Oct. 6-8: See the agenda or register today and save!
• SMX London - Nov. 4-5: Pre-agenda rate now available. Click here.