Varying Internal Link Anchor Text with Each New Page Load

[RyanOD]

I'm asking for people's opinions on varying internal anchor text. Before you jump in and say, "Oh yes, varying your anchor text is always a good idea", let me explain.

I'm not talking about varying anchor text on different links scattered throughout a site. We all know that is a wise thing to do for a variety of reasons that have been covered in many places. What I'm talking about is including semi-useful links below the fold and then varying the anchor text with each page load. Each time Googlebot crawls a page, it sees different anchor text for each link. That way, Googlebot is seeing, for example, 'san diego bars', 'taverns in san diego', 'san diego clubs', and 'pubs in san diego' all pointing to a San Diego bar/tavern/club/pub page.

I'm wondering if there is value in this approach. Will it help a site rank well for multiple search queries? Could it potentially be better than static anchor text as it may help Google better understand the targeted page? Is it a good way to protect a large site with a huge number of internal links from Penguin?

To summarize, we're talking about the impact of varying the anchor text on a single page with each page load as opposed to varying the anchor text on different pages.

Thoughts?

[Matt-Williamson]

Oh yes, varying your...oh wait sorry you didn't want that haha.

Erm this is an interesting idea - on first read my first thought was you're trying to game the system and that's never a good idea.

Then I thought a little more and I suppose it is very similar to dynamic content such as offers on your linking page, although it always points at one location.

I suppose it is only similar to changing your anchor text manually to see what works best, but I think that such frequent changes could end up getting noticed - a link anchor changing every time Google visits - surely Google is clever enough to notice this pattern and doesn't it smack of over-optimisation?

I bet others have already tried this - have you done any digging to see if you can find out what the impact was?

[Chris.Menke]

What comes to me is this: I don't think you'll get the value out of links with dynamic anchor text that you would get with anchor text that is static. A page's overall value and the value it passes on  to other page via links is iterative--it's not assigned after just a single pass of the bot. The dynamism would devalue the links, if not render them worthless all together.

And even if you had one thousand variations of anchor texts for each link and they did pass some sort of value, what do you think that footprint would look like after a year or two of google crawls?  Upon a manual review, someone there would say, "Huh, look at this, their links change all the time and each one is focused around a specific money term--I think it's obvious that they're trying to manipulate their rankings.  Smack--here's a penalty for you."

[Saijo.George]

I would say test it out and see what happens. I would love to know the result. ( youmoz post perhaps ? )

what I assume would happen :

The new link only counts when G-bot crawls the page ( and obviously not on each page load ), and each time Gbot crawls the page it will see that an old link is dropped and a new one is added. So what ever value you gain from the new link , you will lose from the old one which is no longer there. So I really don't see the value to be had from an SEO point of view . But repeat visitors to you page may click through to those pages. ( Again testing it will give you solid proof )

[RyanOD]

Thanks for everyone's input!

Without pointing any fingers, let's just say this is happening in the wild right now. It came as a bit of a surprise to me as I wouldn't expect Google to be fooled into ranking a site better for multiple keywords based on dynamic internal anchor text. To be clear, I have no evidence this technique is helping or that the motivation is to game Google for better rankings, but I haven't come up with any other reason.

If it is working, I must admit, it's pretty clever...