Google Changed Its Algorithm !!

[dpking]

Looks like Google changed its algorithm and now its not giving that much importance to anchor text.
I was surpriced with the sudden fall in the ranking for my experiment page and many other webmasters reported something similar.
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Also give your opinion about this issue !! :-)
Suggestions and new idea's always help in discovering new things !!
Thanks

[salman4raza]

i have noticed this change some years before. and this is not only for google, all other SE gives it importance

[lycos]

I'm not sure how you confirm on this and come up with this conclusion but why do they want to remove the importance of using anchor text in the first place?

[dpking]

Originally Posted by salman4raza

i have noticed this change some years before. and this is not only for google, all other SE gives it importance

Buddy, Google is not giving Importance anymore this is what the latest change !!

Originally Posted by lycos

I'm not sure how you confirm on this and come up with this conclusion but why do they want to remove the importance of using anchor text in the first place?

Performed an-experiment 2-3 months back, and was able to get Top10 position at google.com for the targetted keyword, but now its no where ... Many other webmasters reported something similar so I think its enuff to conclude that Backlinks .. a.k.a anchor text are not that much important now !! :-)

>>why do they want to remove the importance of using anchor text in the first place?

I believe because of massive abuse of backlinks and anchor text, everyone is busy in making backlinks instead of providing quality in the content.

[JohnS0N]

True, a single anchor text won't get you far for the term you want to rank. Search engines are leaning more and more towards latent semantic indexing, what this means is that SE's can recognize similar and related terms more than ever before. A query on google for:

~laser surgery

will not only return the words "laser" and "surgery" in bold, but also the most theme related terms. It seems "eye" is one such word. Theme relevance is a very important factor nowadays and you better have some of these related keywords on your page to rank higher.

About links; You gotta have multiple related anchors, for example if you want to rank for "car insurance", you would want other anchors like "insure car", "auto insurance", "automobile insurance", "insurance for cars"... just like natural linking done by others would be.

To rank high for the term "auto insurance" it would be best to have a separate category related to this term and make a lot of posts that include the term "auto insurance" + 1, 2, or 3 keywords and then link them back to this broad keyword, "auto insurance".

[scubita]

Originally Posted by dpking

Looks like Google changed its algorithm and now its not giving that much importance to anchor text.

Definitely something changed last 2 months. I'm saying it since July... Besides, anchor text will always loose it's power in Algo to links from social communities, etc etc because this is the way to go near future.

Originally Posted by JohnS0N

True, a single anchor text won't get you far for the term you want to rank. Search engines are leaning more and more towards latent semantic indexing, what this means is that SE's can recognize similar and related terms more than ever before.

Agree. This is another huge change for SE's and they are implementing it.

Originally Posted by lycos

I'm not sure how you confirm on this and come up with this conclusion but why do they want to remove the importance of using anchor text in the first place?

Untill an official confirmation comes up from G we can only guess. But major changes are happening this summer...

[Adulu]

If anchor text not important, what's important now?

[JohnS0N]

Originally Posted by Adulu

If anchor text not important, what's important now?

If you would actually read the thread you would get an idea.

But as everything in SEO, nothing is a guarantee.

[lycos]

Hi JohnSON, What you are saying here is true. I believe google has reasons for coming up with all the changes. I believe that by doing this, google can prevent their search engine from being manipulated by webmasters and for that, allows only sites which are really good relevant to the search comes out top in ranking.

Originally Posted by JohnS0N

Theme relevance is a very important factor nowadays and you better have some of these related keywords on your page to rank higher.

[farhajr]

thanks to know all that let me know more

[tradeya]

so it mean people will pay more attention to content relevant and keywords density in the content more than before. that would be good for the surfers who are looking for the information as well. am i right?

[izwanmad]

Originally Posted by dpking

Looks like Google changed its algorithm and now its not giving that much importance to anchor text.
I was surpriced with the sudden fall in the ranking for my experiment page and many other webmasters reported something similar.
Read More

Also give your opinion about this issue !! :-)
Suggestions and new idea's always help in discovering new things !!
Thanks

I guest this is good things.. because what more important is the website content. if just using the anchor text for ranking, its not appropriate because webmaster can put their website for 1st ranking by put their link (with anchor text) at other website... and this seems to look like a spam.

Originally Posted by Adulu

If anchor text not important, what's important now?

definitely your website content.

[dayjober]

I can see the change. But Search Engines sometimes make experiment changes to see if they can give better results that way. Also they give importance to things percentage-wise. So, even if they lower the importance of Anchor Text for now, you still don't need to panic. If they find the change in Algorithm is not giving any better results or giving worse results, they would revert it to the old Algorithm. Also whatever changes the SE's make, you can still get good rankings if you can think about how would they have changed the importance factor and experiment a bit.

[sweetfunny]

I'm not seeing this, i've got quite a few test sites propped up with only backlinks/anchor text and they haven't shifted.

What are your primary backlink sources? The reason is Google has probably devalued the "types" of backlinks your site most relies on.

[DavidK1]

Originally Posted by sweetfunny

The reason is Google has probably devalued the "types" of backlinks your site most relies on.

I believe this is a more likely reason.

[nikmahajan]

I think the anchor links these days are nofollow. That's why SE are not indexing them.

[Abhik]

Originally Posted by sweetfunny

The reason is Google has probably devalued the "types" of backlinks your site most relies on.

Thats probably it..
BTW, if you rank well for a keyword, you will also rank for a non-targeted, but similar keyword.

[Ant_C]

I think you are jumping to conclusions.

There could be 100 reasons that your page no longer ranks well.

Why are you so sure it's down to anchor text?

[lorocreative]

i would say they hit all the web directories.. took the link weight down and the result is, that many guys here lost their rankings

[chuckypita]

Originally Posted by lorocreative

i would say they hit all the web directories.. took the link weight down and the result is, that many guys here lost their rankings

Google "rankings" pages have shifted?

Well, I guess it's a good thing I'm just a "rookie" so I can get adjusted to this new shift quickly!