Does changing Anchor text of old built links raise a red flag in Google?

[Ishrat-Khan]

I have lot of links (10000+) built against Exact match anchor text so what is solution to that now?

Other than disavowing them all, May I change the anchor text of those links (From Exact Match To Brand Name or naked URL)?

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.

I respect your opinions but please only comment if you are sure about it because I am already facing a penalty so can't afford to get another.

[dotfly]

first of all: you wont get an answer here that you can rely on like a guarantee! The only thing youll get are opinions and maybe experiences... that might sounds a little bit frustrating but that`s it.

What I can tell you from my experience is that changing the anchor text of such a high amount has a very big chance to raise a red flag. Officially its not known that google has an algorithm to detect that BUT I wont rely on that!

If Google has already marked those links as "bad" the only way to overcome this issue is nofollow or to disavow them... if they were just a few ones this wouldn`t be such a problem but according to your numbers I would not recommend to rename them

[Carson-Ward]

If you have a lot of links that you can control the anchor text on, that's a pretty sure sign that you should remove them. These aren't the links that Google is going to reward or ignore in the long term. Whether you're currently being hurt by them would require a very thorough review on an expert's part, but I'm sure that links you place manually are links Google doesn't want to count.

There are thoughts that Google is using its "link churn" patents to use the rate at which anchor text or links change as a part of rankings, but it's not known exactly how the mechanism works. Regardless, if the links are spammy and you're subtracting spammy links rather than adding, you won't get hit by any mechanisms designed to flag artificial rank manipulation.

Do try to remove links before you disavow them. Disavow is a last-ditch option, and Google still won't accept it if no effort has been made at removal.