Anchor Text Phrases Now Tracked by Google

If you login to your Google Webmaster Tools, then click on Statistics > Page Analysis, you'll see a list of external link anchor text. Gone are the days of trying to keep track of what keywords you've used in your link campaigns.

But I was also wondering why they couldn't list the web sites associated with the anchor text phrases. Google obviously has that data, so why not show it? I'm not trying to be negative because this is definitely a useful part of Google's Webmaster Tools and is just another reason of why they are the benchmark for online search.

Although as we all know, not all links are created equal. I could assume that my site is better optimized for the top listed phrase since more sites link to me using that anchor text than any others. But what about the quality of those pages? I have no way of knowing if my site is really optimized better for the top phrase Google lists or the 10th phrase down. The top phrase could be contained in 50 poor quality link exchanges from years ago, while the 10th phrase showed up only once in an MSN news story and another time at WebProNews.com. Hypothetical, but it's clear the order these phrases are listed in should act as only a guide for you, and nothing exact.

Ok, I'm done nitpicking.