Changing Anchor Text May Raise A Red Flag

Jul 29, 2013 - 8:38 am 21 by
Filed Under Link Building

red flagA WebmasterWorld thread has a webmaster asking if changing the anchor text he has been using for links to his site to something "more natural" would lead to a confirmation that he has been up to some bad link building.

In short, does Google have algorithms to detect anchor text changes and if so, do those algorithms detect these sorts of changes and raise a red flag on sites doing it.

For example, that old old big blue pineapple chair topic and you decide that you want to link to the domain name pinechair.com as PineChair, as opposed to the anchor text you've been using for years of [big blue pineapple chair].

From:

big blue pineapple chair

To:

PineChair.com

Now, you go through as many of the old back links as possible and update them from the old to the new anchor text.

Will that action set you deeper into a link penalty or help improve things? Or are we looking to deeply into the topic?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: December 26, 2025

Dec 26, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Status, News Publishers Traffic Distribution, Ads In AI Overviews Expand, ChatGPT Ads & Christmas

Dec 26, 2025 - 8:01 am
Other Search Engines

ChatGPT Ads May Prioritize Sponsored Content In AI Responses

Dec 26, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google: #1 Google Ads Launches Of 2025

Dec 26, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Continues Centering Search Results Test

Dec 26, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Pick A Reasonable Site Name To Rank For In Search

Dec 26, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google AdSense Favicons Resulting In Higher CTR For Now