First Link on Page? - The small print

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Most of us will be aware that Google only uses the first hypertext link on a page as a signal. Does this include menus?

Let's see if I can explain...

For example lets say your website is about mauve widgets and your common menu has a homepage link, "Home" at the top of the page. If you link to the homepage using the anchor text "mauve widgets" within the text content on another page will this be ignored? (Since there is already a text link to this page on the menu above.)

[MrFewkes]

BDW - May I ask how you know this to be true (the first link on a page being the only one to send the signal)

[tedster]

I believe you are referring to some tests reported on by SEOmoz members as well as by Bruce Clay - tests of more than a year ago. These tests were about what happens with anchor text influence when there is more than one internal link pointing to the same URL. They have nothing to do with ALL the links on a page, only the situation where more than one internal link points to the same URL.

Yes, in those initial test, it appeared that the second anchor text was not influencing relevance scores. However, there was some interesting follow-up testing that if the second occurrence of the URL also included a fragment identifier [#something] then the anchor text was influential.

I would guess that things have evolved since those tests. And I also believe they were looking at multiple links in the content area - not navigation links being counted as the first link on a page. Google most definitely segments the page and scores different areas differently (the intelligent surfer model as opposed to the random surfer model)

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I don't personally know it to be true. I only know that it has been accepted within the SEO community for the last year or two.

Google first link rule.