Spam Penalty for Domain Link Text?

Is there a spam penalty for link text identical to the domain name?

[asterix1]

Jane_Doe posted in this thread - [webmasterworld.com...] - that Google incurs a spam penalty for link text that coincides with a domain name. For example, www.cool-blue-widgets.com, linked to by a link with text "cool blue widgets," would incur a penalty.

I don't understand how this could be possible - I thought the whole idea was to have the link text coincide with the keyphrase of the target page, in this case the domain name. And in most cases I imagine it would, for example, if I link to www.blue-widgets.com I'm most likely going to name the link text "blue widgets."

Or is there something I'm missing?

Thanks,
Alex

[tedster]

The widespread conjecture I read is that this is a matter of degree. If absolutely every backlink (or even nearly every backlink) has identical anchor text, over many, many backlinks, then this defies normal statistical distribution and those backlinks may well be seen as manipulative and under the control of the target website in some way, rather than "natural" and freely given citations from other domains.

Of course, for a "penalty" like this to be effective, much data would need to be gathered and analyzed -- it can't realistically be a black and white issue.

[edited by: tedster at 5:05 pm (utc) on July 11, 2006]

[phantombookman]

I have several sites where this happens and have no problems at all.

Often it is the obvious thing to do, how would you link to the BBC? How many links must there be to this site saying Webmaster World?

Perhaps if your domain is
by-far-the-cheapest-dental-plans-in-california.com
then continually using that may be problematic

[colin_h]

I can't see how this would be possible to apply, without the possibility of knocking your opponents out of the serps just by linking to their site and using their domain name led keywords. It's probably more likely that Google would apply a filter against the site who is linking to you, rendering it a non-PR boosting link.

All the Best

Col :-)

[Pico_Train]

Phanthombookman has it right.

It's not really that good an idea to penalise because there are more links with anchor text saying GREAT SITE for www.greatsite.com - Logically, this is normal.

Stay away from viagra, that little blue pill just puts you in a hard spot

Couldn't resist.

[jomaxx]

I agree with that. I have such a site that gets tons of links, including deep links, but the link text is usually simply the site name. It's a bit annoying, I'd like more "click here for great widget information"-type links, but it frequently happens that simply linking by the site name is the most "natural" way to do it.

My guess is that Google would minimize the anchor-text factor, but that otherwise the link would be considered to be as valid as any other.

[caveman]

I've seen plenty of examples where this was a problem, on our own sites and on other sites. There were also some extreme examples of sites not being able to rank for their own names immediately following some of the past big G updates, e.g., Florida. Moreover, fixing the backlink problem in the past fixed the ranking issue. Things are less clear now given lags built into their system on some fronts, but I have no doubt it's an algo factor, and an important one. We also have evidence that the kinds of links coming in matters WRT this issue, and that the profile of the target site also matters: Some sites are more immune than others. You could guess the kinds of sites that are more or less immune. As tedster says too, all a matter of degree.

Related, co-dependent factors IMO include: Age of site, age of links, clustered ages of links w/ identical anchor text, IP issues, power of target site, brand name versus generic site name, and more.

[steveb]

"I don't understand how this could be possible"

Anything is possible, but this idea is silly if only because it would "penalize" upwards of 90% of the sites on the Internet. Some people always want to look for that "one thing" that is reponsible for something, and then ignore the literally millions of exceptions to their thesis since it contradicts the experience they seem to have on one or a few sites.

[whitenight]

Anything is possible, but this idea is silly if only because it would "penalize" upwards of 90% of the sites on the Internet.

I agree. It's kinda funny to think about what's "natural" on the internet but,

Let's look at Google in SEO terms.
What percentage of their backlinks would say:

"Click here"
"Google"
"Great search engine" (or some other term a SEO would optimize for)

I'm willing to bet "Google" (ie. the domain name ) wins hands down...as it does for many sites.

One could argue that NOT having a nice percentage of backlinks that say "www.example.com" or "Example" is an indication of heavy SEO.