Anchor Text: What counts towards your total keywords/anchor text?

Does a phrase with keyword 1 give credit for keyword 1?

[kgam]

I am about begin a new link building campaign and need your help to explain another level of anchor text.

If a keyword that I am targeting is within a phrase, does Google (and the others) count the link vote for the phrase, the keyword or the phrase and the keyword?

As an example, let's say I have the four following inbound links with the following anchor text:
"widgets"
"pocket widgets"
"green widgets"
"widgets on sale".

I know that I need to vary my anchor text to avoid having the links appear unnatural, but will all four of these give me credit/help with "widgets" as the keyword I am trying to improve search results for?

[kgam]

This may seem like a basic question, but I have not seen it explicitly adressed before. The existing anchor text implies that I all of these examples would give credit/votes for widgets. Is that correct?

[tedster]

Yes, that's essentially true. It is probably a bit more complex, involving percentage of the total phrase and possibly some semantic work, too. It seems to be a work in progress, and I expect it to continue to evolve.

Most of the Google algo today has moved beyond simple yes/no logic, and I expect to see that fuzzy, AI kind of direction continuing.

[ciscoforum]

does that mean you could technicially get ranked well with one keyword without having it on your website?

[tedster]

Yes - it happens unintentionally, and sometimes intentionally in the exploit that people call "Google bombing".

[internetheaven]

I see alot of pages ranking high in one of my industries (commercial) where the keyphrase ONLY appears in links pointing to the page. Obviously the easiest way to check that is the cache link in the Google results. Sorry I can't post examples here.