12 replies to this topic

[TopTenOrBust]

Here's the scenario:

Let's say I happen to have a link from a news/media site (unrelated to my site), but it is in their "shopping" page (kind of related to me). The news site is a PR8 that is linking back to me. The title on the page is "WXXX - Shopping Directory".

Now does it help if I have the word "shopping" in my anchor text? And, if the page it links back to on my site has the word "shopping" in the title.

Is any of this important to getting the most out of the inbound link?

[Jill]

This is one of those things that you'll most likely hear differing opinions on. My personal belief is that the page title that your link is on will probably have no relevance to how your site ultimately ranks.

But I don't believe it's really something one can measure.

As the engines get better at working with relevancy issues (if they ever do) stuff like that may be an important factor. But I kind of doubt it is at the moment.

Certainly, I'd go for the relevent titled link over a non-relevant one, if I had to choose, because the people visiting that page would most likely be more interested in my site, as well.

[Michael Martinez]

I tend to agree with Jill. I don't think the page title is being coupled with link anchor text to determine relevance for other pages. But it does approach some methodologies that have been proposed in various patents and technical papers.

It could be used as a measure of second-hand relevance, I suppose. That is not the correct name for the concept, but it's something I read somewhere about how one page can assert relevance for topic X and its outbound links using anchor text for topic X can therefore help another page with that topic, whereas a link from a page that doesn't ....

Um, never mind.

I don't think the page title is being coupled with outbound link anchor text. If they ever do that, I hope they come up with a less convoluted way of explaining it.

[Robert813]

It is interesting to note that in the original Stanford document http://www-db.stanfo...rub/google.html they state:
2.2 Anchor Text
The text of links is treated in a special way in our search engine. Most search engines associate the text of a link with the page that the link is on. In addition, we associate it with the page the link points to.

Notice they say in "addition". The way I read it, they do look at the linking page to some degree. To what degree though none of us know for sure.

While I will take a inbound link from any reputable site willingly, when actively building links I try to focus on relevant links as much as I can these days, but that is not to say. All that said, sometimes I see sites where to me, it so clearly looks like relevant links are playing a role in the sites ranking. And then I see others with a low percentage of relevant pages linking and they do well...so go figure!

It is worth pointing out, that the most recent patent filed in March of 2003, states nothing of this linking page relevancy. It's an easy read and worth reading, but also worth pointing out that it is filed by a handful of Google engineers, not oogle itself. http://appft1.uspto....&RS=20050071741

[Jill]

The text of links is treated in a special way in our search engine. Most search engines associate the text of a link with the page that the link is on. In addition, we associate it with the page the link points to.

Notice they say in "addition". The way I read it, they do look at the linking page to some degree. To what degree though none of us know for sure.

You're misinterpretting what they're saying.

They're saying that most engines would count the text in the link as words on the page. (The page that the link is on.)

And then they're saying that they added an extra component to that, where they count that anchor text when determining the weighting of the page that the link points to, as well.

None of this has anything to do with Title tags from pages that you have links from, as far as I can tell.

[Robert813]

You know what?? I think you're right after reading your post and re-reading that section!

[Robert813]

NO ...don't even say it Jill....you're not always right..LOL As a matter of fact..don;t even think it! LOL

[Robert813]

I know I read that they do look at the linking page somewhere.

Okay..let's try this quote from Google at http://www.google.com/technology/

"So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."

this can be found under the heading "Page Rank explained". I would imagine this would be the title too since it is a part of the page. I'm sure some will dispute if they are actually doing this and I for one don't know for certain. All I know is they say they do it and I often observe sites that this seems to be a logical answer as to how it surpasses another site in my opinion.

[Michael Martinez]

The way I understood the question, TopTenorBust was stipulating two pages, A and B. A's title is "XXX - Shopping page" and on that page somewhere is a link to B with the word "shopping" in the anchor text. And I think B links back to A with a similar link.

Coupling the anchor text and title tag like that is, in my opinion, too simplistic and not even remotely hinted at in any Google paper or document.

There is a paper, that I alluded to, that talks about page B's topicality being deemed more important if page A (linking to B) shares a similar topicality. This was not a PageRank issue. Or, rather, it was a modified PageRank (call it Topic PageRank). There are several papers which propose modified PageRank methodologies (LocalRank being one of the most frequently cited).

I don't believe Google looks at topicality. They would have to track documents by keyword, and Dr. Garcia has argued extensively against even Google having the resources to do that (his comments were addressing speculation about whether Google has implemented Latent Semantic Indexing -- he feels it is technologically impossible with current resources).

[Robert813]

The way I understood the question, TopTenorBust was stipulating two pages, A and B.  A's title is "XXX - Shopping page" and on that page somewhere is a link to B with the word "shopping" in the anchor text.  And I think B links back to A with a similar link.

That's not how I understand the question Michael. But then again my comprehension has been slightly flawed today..LOL. I don't think he ever stipulated that B links back to A. IMHO he is simply asking if the page linking to him has the title "Shopping", and his anchor text has the word "shopping" and if his page in which the link is pointing to has the word "shopping " in the title, would this be benficial. I say YES! It surely cannot hurt.

[Michael Martinez]

Well, I've never used just that combination to get any sort of rankings boost. I make my title tag describe the page, and if I have a page about horse shoes but want to tell my visitors about a canned soda page, well, I don't worry about about the title tag.

Sometimes you can do just about everything that every SEO site and resource tells you to do, and the other guy still comes out on top.

Sometimes you don't do a thing and you're THERE, number 1. On top. The Site To Beat ™.

[Jill]

It surely cannot hurt.

Agreed.

[TopTenOrBust]

IMHO he is simply asking if the page linking to him has the title "Shopping", and his anchor text has the word "shopping" and if his page in which the link is pointing to has the word "shopping " in the title, would this be benficial.

You got it Robert. That's exactly the situation.

I make my title tag describe the page, and if I have a page about horse shoes but want to tell my visitors about a canned soda page, well, I don't worry about about the title tag.

The relationship between the title on the media page, my anchor text (on the media page), and the landing page (on my site) is related.

Not horse shoes and soda. More like shopping(media page title) >>Shopping for horse shoe(my anchortext) >>Guide to shopping for horse shoes(title on my landing page)

Anyhow, I think we're beating a dead horse here now.

Thanks for the responses everyone!