wackmaster - 5:49 pm on May 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

abcdef, thanks.

Regarding this anchor text thing (first brought to our attention by rfgdxm1), there is little doubt in our minds that G is looking at dampening it in some cases.

If you do an allinanchor search across the nine data centers, it yields some interesting results. What is of course hard to divine is what/why G is doing on this front (i.e., what are their criteria for dampening anchor text in some cases and not others...and what impact will it have if they decide to go with this).

The trouble I have with it is, if "blue widgets" is the anchor text most often used to refer to a site that has lots of inbound links, and is called "BlueWidgets.com", how the heck can they penalize you for that? One possiblility: perhaps they are dampening only the inbound anchor text from one's own pages? Doubt that it's that simple though...it never is ;-).

And besides, is it bad to point to the lead blue widgets page in your site with anchor text that says the same...if it's accurate and relevant? Hmmmm. This can be a game where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't!