Google’s John Mueller recently answered a question about whether anchor text was still a ranking factor. Mueller’s answer focused on anchor text within your own site linking out to other pages internally and externally.

Although he did affirm that Google uses anchor text, he didn’t say it in the context of a ranking factor for inbound links. He emphasized it in the context of internal links.

This distinction is especially important for industries like Real estate digital marketing in Dubai, where internal linking structures often help distribute authority across property pages. The same applies to a Dubai property marketing agency, where strategic internal anchor text can clarify topical relevance.

Is Anchor Text a Ranking Factor?

The question posed to John Mueller was specifically about the anchor text on inbound links. There are many views on how Google uses it, with the dominant theory since 2013 being that too many optimized anchor texts can result in a manual action or lower rankings.

Here is the question:

“Is anchor text still an important ranking factor in 2019? Lots of companies have made studies that they pointed out there’s no correlation. So I don’t know, and there’s a link to a Google patent.”

John Mueller Confirms Usefulness of Anchor Text… Sort Of.

Mueller’s answer begins by confirming that Google uses anchor text but he stops short of commenting on its use as a ranking factor for inbound links.

“With regards to anchor text in general we do use it… It’s something that we do pick up. It’s a great way to give us context about a link. In particular within your website.”

See what I mean? He doesn’t directly answer the question about inbound links. He answers with an emphasis on internal links.

A question about anchor text within the context of ranking factors? Kind of seems the question is about inbound links.

Mueller then continues his answer in the context of anchor text on internal links:

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“I would continue to look at the anchor text that you use, especially internally within your website and try to make sure that you’re providing anchor text in a way that is really useful, provides context to what is linked of the other page.”

He goes on to discuss linking to products within a website and so on. Clearly his answer about anchor text is predominantly about internal links.

For example, if you operate in Real estate digital marketing in Dubai, linking internally from blog content to property listing services using descriptive anchor text can strengthen topical signals. Likewise, a Dubai property marketing agency can use contextual internal links to connect community guides, developer pages, and service offerings.

I’m not saying his answer stopped short of answering the question or that he is wrong. John Mueller is 100% correct.

The important takeaway is that Google doesn’t directly reveal much about anchor text for rankings.

However, Bill Slawski may have discovered an interesting clue. More about that further down.

Breaking the Anchor Text Paradigm

There are several competing ideas about what to do about anchor text. Most articles state that using optimized anchor text is potentially dangerous. But they recommend using anchor text anyway.

A recent article recommends against using anchor text in bulk. It recommends a modest use of anchor text in relation to branded anchor text.

Another article I read recommends making your anchor text look “natural” by studying what the anchor text distribution of your competitors is.

Both kinds of articles acknowledge that using anchor text for inbound links has potential for danger. Yet both explicitly recommend the use of anchor text.

Neither kind of article suggests an alternative to the anchor text paradigm. They both affirm it. It’s as if the SEO industry is locked into this anchor text box and they are afraid of letting it go.

For competitive industries such as Real estate digital marketing in Dubai, relying purely on exact-match anchor text can be risky. A smart Dubai property marketing agency focuses instead on contextual relevance, branded mentions, and content authority.

Virtual Anchor Text

The role of anchor text has always been about understanding what a page is about. But nowadays, so is the content, perhaps to a greater degree.

Bill Slawski recently noticed that an older anchor text patent had something new added to it. What was added seems to be a way to create a virtual anchor text.

Bill and the patent call it Annotation Text.

But the way it’s described, it works like a virtual anchor text. It’s not anchor text, but it works like anchor text.

What the patent does is associate the surrounding text that is located within a certain distance of the anchor text with the outbound link. So instead of using the anchor text itself (which may be “click here”), the algorithm could use surrounding text.

The keywords chosen from the surrounding text are described in the patent as text that is relevant to what the page is about and to what the page being linked to is about.

Thus, there’s a relevance match between the page that is linking, the text that surrounds the outbound link, the page that is being linked to, and also the search query.

This concept has strong implications for Real estate digital marketing in Dubai, where property descriptions, neighborhood insights, and surrounding contextual text can reinforce relevance signals. A Dubai property marketing agency can benefit from this by ensuring the surrounding content of every link clearly supports the target topic.

Is Surrounding Text a Virtual Anchor Text?

It’s important to point out that just because something is patented does not mean it is being used by Google.

One reason why Google might use this kind of analysis is because people frequently link with “click here.” The sentences immediately preceding or following the anchor text can often provide meaningful context to that link.

So it makes sense that Google could use surrounding text as a virtual version of anchor text.

For industries like Real estate digital marketing in Dubai, this means your overall content quality and semantic depth may matter more than obsessing over exact-match anchors. And for any Dubai property marketing agency, building authority through contextual, relevant content could outweigh aggressive anchor manipulation.