One of my all time favorite web searches is for the words "click here." Whenever someone asks how much anchor text matters, I tell them to search for those two little words.
The results always contain things like the download site for Adobe Acrobat, Flash, Quicktime, and so on. I hope nobody ever tries to launch a serious on-line business named "Click Here." They'd never make it onto the first page!
More recently I've discovered that the query is even more entertaining on the big news search engines:
Can you tell it's Friday? :-)
Posted by jzawodn at May 06, 2005 12:33 PM
Oh, dude, I'm so with you! A friend of mine sent me a link to this because of my previous blog entries:
http://travis.pettijohn.com/blog/comments.php?entry=258
http://travis.pettijohn.com/blog/comments.php?entry=259
Of course, now "on Google," "on Yahoo!," "on Google News," and "on Yahoo! News" are now a little bit more like "click here." ;-)
When I saw the sponsored links for "Click Here", on both Yahoo and Google, I laughed. Turns out, that's the title of a real book, "Click Here: To Find Out How I Survived Seventh Grade", about a seventh grader whose private blog shows up on the school intranet. I wondor if the author (or their publisher) thought about the SEM implications of their title choice?
What do you mean not make it onto the first page? I thought Yahoo's premium search plan allows a business to pay Yahoo/Google money to get on the first page regardless.
Maybe i'm tripping..
Yeah, that is stupid when the page in question is being viewed on some form of mobile device, and it becomes ridiculous when it's read aloud by some form of speech browser.
Searching for 'exit' on Google and Yahoo brings the same top three sites:
Google, Yahoo and Disney
Reason? Check the warning page of most porn sites.
90% will have an 'exit' link, just after the disclaimer, linking to either Google, Yahoo or Disney.
A lot of documents are looking for titles:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=untitle+document&btnG=Google+Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=untitle+document&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1
A lot of documents are looking for titles:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=untitled+document&btnG=Google+Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=untitled+document&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1
Jeremy:
Is your blog syndicated now? :-) Looks kinda seedy, they are taking your entire post
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050507HowMuchDoesAnchorTextMatter.html
That also illustrates the need for some usability education.
http://josephlindsay.com/archives/2004/12/02/usability-irony/
I have taken the opposing viewpoint in "'Click Here' Is Not A Bad Thing"
http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2005/05/click-here-is-not-bad-thing.html
it's just google's way of ranking pages in part on how many other sites link to a particular page...
i really like the observation porn sites driving disney, yahoo, and the like to the top results for "exit" though. :) but someone needs to explain to me how desktop.google.com got the 4th result?!
i completely disagree with jon (above) with this.
from an accessibility standpoint, the anchor text "click here" does nothing to describe what the user 'wins' when they click there. you shouldn't need to look at anything but the hyperlinked text to know exactly what you're gonna get.
Instead of using:
"This site requires the Zingbat plugin. _Click Here_ to download it"
a better way would be:
"This site requires the _Zingbat plugin_.
(or even hyperlink the entire sentence)
with a link title something like "Download the Zingbat plugin"
i make it a point to never use the phrase "click here" anywhere on a web page; and people who do use it should be lumped right into the ultra n00b category with those that use FrontPage and call themselves web designers.
Similarly, the market for "Contact Us" seems to be a closed shop. I still use it though, as I think people expect to see it and will be confused if they can't immediately find it. A classic example of the problem facing all SEO's, usability or SEO?.
BB
the anchor text is answer because some high pr sites are lower in google than some low pr sites.
