FEBRUARY 16

Google Profiles Pass Anchor Text Relevency

Filed under: SEO
February 16th, 2009

I’m fairly confident my methodology is sound this time. Google Profiles pass link juice. Specifically, they pass anchor text relevancy through to a landing page. That’s an easy link. Now all you need to do is get everyone linking to your profile.

I have been testing whether a page passes PageRank over the last few months and in particular was using Google Profile for my test. I managed to corrupt my first test – but in the process learnt that anchor text should not be unduly long if you want it to be effective. This time though, this result pretty much proves my theory I think, that says Google Profiles DO pass juice.

I set up some unique anchor text on my Google Profile like this:

Which results now in the following Google search result:

To be clear, the phrase “little Bed-shire” does not appear anywhere on the site in the harlington.net site result. The result was a “GoogleWhack”. The only page where that text appears, in that order, is on my Google profile of Dixon Jones. Yet because that text appears ONLY in anchor text, Google’s search engine has decided that the page it links t0 – not the profile itself – is the relevant page in this context.

Of course, Google’s right. So how did the others fare?

Well Live Search comes in second… finding the result, but giving the relevance to the Google Profile rather than the landing page:

In last place comes Yahoo. They probably ban Google profiles on principal.

Now before everyone gets carried away with rushing out to get a free link from Google, a word of caution. The only commercially viable link in my profile is absolutely buried in the serps. My test ONLY tested what it tested… mileage cannot be guaranteed and results may vary.

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25 users commented

Thanks for sharing this man! I’d say MSn’s results are better as they share the source that is likely to make clear who/why those two sites/pages are tied together, vs Google just showing the conclusion. E.g. Doing a math problem and showing your answer vs showing how you got there.

said Gab Goldenberg on February 16th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

Fair comment – but your theory doesn’t scale. In an isolated example, showing the “source” is OK, but let’s say 10 pages link to the landing page… you suggest the search engines (Google OR MSN) should list the 10 sites with the anchor text above the page they all link to.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is at the hearty of Google’s (actually Stamford university’s) patent, though, which might be why Micrsoft is researching “BrowseRank”: http://dixonjones.com/seo/browserank-microsofts-challange-to-pagerank-part-1/ As it can’t duplicate Google exactly.

said Dixon Jones on February 16th, 2009 at 5:46 pm

Very interesting. Now see whether changing the anchor text to [Harlington] will improve your ranking for that keyword. You are currently ranked at #5 on google.com as shown in the UK, #63 on google.com as shown in the US and #5 on Google.co.uk.

If there is some juice being passed, you should at least see some ranking benefit where you are at #63.

However, I have a feeling that the fact that that link passed relevancy was due to the uniqueness of the anchor text. Yahoo reports 109 links to harlington.net page and all of them have [harlington] for an anchor text. Since you gave the link an unique anchor text, Google “decided” to use it as a relevancy signal.

said Neyne on February 16th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

The lack of other signals is what makes the test valid. I suspect you are right… the link may be passing “relevency” rather than “oomf” but checking whether the prpfile passes “oomf” wouldn’t ba a sensible test, because the page itself doesn’t have any or many inbound links, so I really wouldn’t expect that the profile increases the ranking of a site on its own.

But if Google linked to the profile with a flat link from its home page… THAT would be a different matter

said Dixon Jones on February 16th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

Im not saying your test is not valid. What I am saying is that Google will possibly not behave the same way with all the links. It may treat a link to page X with an anchor text A differently than a link to page X with an anchor text Y. I think that rare anchor texts get treated differently than ubiquitous ones, up to the point that rareness of anchor text may even trump nofollow.

I have not checked this personally, I am just speculating based on some hints dropped by Matt once…

said Neyne on February 16th, 2009 at 9:01 pm

After reading this post, it appears that this post now ranks higher than your profile, how do you think this plays into relevancy?

said youfoundjake on February 18th, 2009 at 3:48 am

I use the google profile as a hub for my social networking antics, its a great way of making sure your other profiles are indexed with an appropriate referring anchor.

said mark rushworth on February 18th, 2009 at 7:53 am

Youfoundjake: It was almost inevitable that would happen after posting and especially after it went hot on Sphinn. Now this page has on page relevancy for the phrase, and links, and (some) authority from this site itself.

Dixon.

said Dixon Jones on February 18th, 2009 at 9:25 am

This is a very useful info…I also set up my site right after I read this post…anyways thanks a bunch for sharing this one!

said Internet Marketing Joy on February 18th, 2009 at 8:05 pm

Thanks a lot for the advice – I have set my Google profile up accordingly – Like you say I need to get a few links into it as well but this was a good spot.

Cheers

said tdl on February 19th, 2009 at 8:01 pm

Google profiles are very strong. I have noticed through my journeys in SEO that profiles do give off a great deal of link power. I wouldn’t base an entire campaign on those along but they do work great.

said Nick Stamoulis on February 20th, 2009 at 7:40 pm

Nice study, sounds like having a google profile is a brilliant idea then, thanks for the heads up..

said Timon Weller on February 22nd, 2009 at 7:47 am

Okay, I’m convinced. More good reasons to make use of your Google profile. I’ve updated mine to contain relevant links to my site, various blog posts, and other social media sites. I look forward to seeing how it does and advising my clients to do the same. Here is my profile (wish Google provided nicer URLs):

http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/103432387018018735098

Thanks for the great tips.

Pat O’Brien

said POB Marketing on April 12th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

Hi Dixon,

Thanks for doing this test. I produced and promoted this video on personal online branding & Google Profile SEO Optimization:

http://bit.ly/googleprofieseo

and I got into a debate with another SEO about whether or not the links passed juice. He then discovered and shared this post with me.

I’m glad the time recording the video was not spent in vain!

Cheers,

Lorna Li

said Lorna Li on May 23rd, 2009 at 7:53 pm

Dixon,

Your findings are very intriguing. I began conducting a somewhat similar descriptive study to determine the authority of Google Profiles. While doing some background research I came across this post.

I’ve given a brief, albeit vague description of what I’m attempting to accomplish on my Google Profile (http://www.google.com/profiles/sweigold). I’ll make sure to let you know what I come up with.

said SeanWeigoldFerguson on June 19th, 2009 at 6:05 am

I always use my google profile as the central point for my social networking sites. This seems to get them indexed the fastest.

said Dennis Franklin on October 20th, 2009 at 2:45 am

Hi all. It worked for me. I have got linkjuice to my pokerblog. Can recommend to get one Google Profile quick. Do also add it to your blog or website, that is: Link back to it. That will make Google happy. I have embedded my Google Profile on my main blog and it also makes my blog look connected to Google (branding purpose)

Thanks and merry xmas!

said Kim Lovo on December 15th, 2009 at 12:17 am

This is definitely a great article based on real life test.
Even if SEO is not science this is the 1st SEO article with a some sort of scientific approach.
We need smart SEO like you at http://webmasters.stackexchange.com (it’s a site similar to stackoverflow that you might already know about) but it’0 more about webmasters and SEO experts.

Thanks for sharing such an interesting SEO test.

said Marco Demaio on August 26th, 2010 at 5:23 pm

I love the headline on the page, people like me showing having realised that pagerank is possible using this technique

Thanks for a great post Tony

said Tony on September 28th, 2010 at 2:13 pm

Well well well, a great little real-world test. Thanks for sharing; this is what a I love about the SEO community! Interesting to hear others advocating the use of Google profiles as a social networking hub too.

said Robin (Esvelte SEO, Sheffield) on October 20th, 2010 at 5:58 pm

Well heck. I never even thought about this with my own Google Profile. Now I need to go run some tests and see how I’m fairing and if I can make it better. Thanks for the write up!