msafi - 9:48 pm on Nov 9, 2008 (gmt 0)

I researched this topic a little more and found some interesting information.

First, I conducted a small test: I looked at Digg's web widget and saw anchor text "Powered by Digg's Users" So I typed this into the search engine and the first page that was returned was the same page that this anchor text is linking to. Now I have a proof that anchor text in widgets helps...I'm not very technical so I suspected that my test could be flawed, so...

I researched this topic a little more and found this: [seomoz.org...] which confirmed that they work. But It also mentions some websites that were penalized for spamming this technique, but I'm not gonna spam it. My widget is gonna be relevant to my topic and the anchor text definitely gonna be relevant to what I talk about in my website.

So, is this the most powerful and easiest way to get lots of links with great anchor text? To me, so far, it seems that it is! But why does the search engine value this anchor text? The Javascript file that produces this anchor text is hosted on the same domain that is being linked to in the widget. Shouldn't this fact alone devalue this anchor text?