Link context as well as anchor text?...

What about allnearanchor?

[Robert Charlton]

It's commonly accepted that, in addition to looking at actual anchor text, Google looks at link context... the text around a link... but I've seen very little discussion about this.

I have no question about the relevance boost that anchor text from a high PR page can provide. I've seen it, very clearly, with both internal and external inbound links.

A relevance boost from link context is something I believe in but haven't directly observed. My guess is that it's not as strong as the boost from anchor text, but I don't know. How much different, eg, is:

www.widgetworld.com - Large and small widgets

from...

Large and small widgets from www.widgetworld.com --?

On the forums in the past, I've theorized, but only theorized, that, for the purposes of interpreting ODP listings, it might make sense for the algo to weigh the text following the title link text more heavily than the text preceding the title link text. The text that follows would logically "belong" to the title, whereas the text that precedes would not. This would make sense in a directory... might not make sense elsewhere.

Any thoughts? How does allnearanchor work?

PS... I'm not talking about page or site context here... I'm only talking about the text context surrounding a link.

[vitaplease]

Yes, I would be suprised if Google would not have implemented several variations to allnearanchor.

Click here for more information on blue widgets.

For sure this link must count in some form for "information on blue widgets".

I agree with your observation on directories having their most important information in the text following the link, as webquotes [labs.google.com] also suggests.

Links in body text would probably carry the sentence as relevance.

I guess a simple test could prove several variations to allnearanchor.

[ciml]

This remains one of my biggest questions. I think that it would have made sense to do this for the reasons you both describe, but I've never been able to see it happen.

[Grumpus]

If you look at the "New Google Patent" thread, you can see how this works now.

If a page has "Click here for blue widgets" with just Click Here in the anchor, the page may still show up in the SERPS for "Blue Widgets" and therefore, will show up the the subset for the calculation of LR.

G.

[ciml]

> can see how this works now

You mean in Google? I think it could happen, but I'm not sure it's there yet.