How Google Handles Naked Links

In a Google Office Hours SEO hangout Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller answered how Google handles links that don’t have anchor text. 

In a follow up question he answered if text surrounding those kinds of links have an effect.

What are Naked Links? 

There are many kinds of links, including branded links, keyword optimized links, nofollowed links, etc. 

This question was about a type of link that is referred to as a naked link. A naked link is a link that is in the form of the URL. Here’s an example of how a “naked” link would look on a web page:

https://www.example.com/

 How Does Google Handle Links Without Anchor Text? 

The question asked was within the context of auditing the inbound links of client sites and noticing that certain links are coded as naked links. The SEO asking the question wanted to know how Google processed those links.

This is the question: 

“When auditing links for my clients websites I see some naked URLs that are pointing to valuable resources on the site. How does Google treat such links when there’s no anchor text?”

 John Mueller Answers How Google Handles a Bare URL John Mueller began his answer by defining what a naked URL is. 

“I think by naked URL it’s basically just someone is linking with the URL as the anchor text.” Next, Mueller states how Google handles a bare link that does not have an anchor text.

 Keywords in URL for Anchor Text 

That’s interesting that Mueller said there is no context in a naked link. What makes it interesting is that there is a school of thought that in the absence of an anchor text that the keywords in the URL might provide Google some information and function like an anchor text. 

Mueller’s answer seemed to contradict that idea or at least to not affirm it. Might make a good follow up question.

Can Surrounding Text and Topic Influence Links? 

At this point someone else asked a follow up question about the text that surrounds the naked link and if that might play a role.

Annotation Text and Links by Bill Slawski 

Bill Slawski wrote a fascinating article in 2019 about a patent that was updated to include a scenario that was about using text that surrounds a link (Add to Your Style Guide Annotation Text: Anchor Text Indexing).

The article about the patent describes a process where the words immediately surrounding a link could give more meaning to that link, particularly links with anchor text like the word “here” that are frequently used to link to other sites. 

The article didn’t suggest that Google was using these signals and neither did Mueller. However it was interesting to watch Mueller referring to the context around a link as being “secondary” although he did not elaborate on what he meant by secondary. 

I messaged Bill Slawski via Facebook Messenger about what Mueller said.

What We Learned About Google and Naked Links 

Mueller affirmed that there is no disadvantage to links coded without anchor text. He affirmed that anchor text is a strong signal. But he also somewhat downplayed the use of surrounding text or page topic as a way to give more meaning to a naked link, saying that yes Google used it but that it was “very secondary.”

Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-google-handles-naked-links/382455/

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