Anchor text is the visible text inside a link. Google's current link guidance asks publishers to make it descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both pages. That is straightforward when you control the link. Inbound links require a different question: who chose the wording, and why?

An independent publisher describing a resource in their own language and a buyer ordering the same commercial phrase across twenty articles can produce identical visible text. The string alone cannot distinguish them. The acquisition relationship and the source pattern can. That is why a backlink audit has to preserve the source page and acquisition record beside the anchor.

A ratio describes the export

Google has not published a safe percentage for exact-match, partial-match, branded, naked-URL, generic, or image anchors. Those categories can help an analyst summarize observations. They are not disclosed Google scoring buckets, and a rule such as “keep exact match below 10%” does not become true because a spreadsheet formats it as a benchmark.

Each export has its own crawl and normalization rules, so its denominator belongs to that dataset. A percentage can summarize one report; it cannot reveal Google's hidden threshold. The backlink audit explains how to preserve source pages and live verification when discovery tools disagree.

What Penguin actually establishes: Google's 2016 announcement says Penguin became real-time and more granular, devaluing spam based on spam signals rather than affecting a whole site. It does not say Penguin enforces a percentage, compares every site with a vertical average, or scores six named anchor categories at the URL level. Do not build an audit around claims the source does not make.

Read patterns as evidence of control

One precise phrase in an original editorial passage

The publisher used that phrase to describe the destination. Exact-match wording alone establishes neither manipulation nor safety.

Read the relationship and page. Leave a genuinely editorial, accurate citation alone.

The same commercial phrase and sentence across unrelated sites

A common brief, syndication source, or controlled placement may exist. Changing the words would not repair the acquisition method.

Join the links to campaign and payment records. Qualify or remove policy-violating placements and stop repeating the method.

Branded or raw-URL anchors from one paid network

The network uses less commercial-looking wording, but payment and control still define the relationship.

Qualify the paid links according to that relationship.

Corrupted anchors from scraper and autogenerated pages

The source copied, generated, or incorrectly encoded a link. That pattern alone does not show that the target site caused it.

Check acquisition records and Manual Actions. Usually record the rows as noise; open the Google disavow procedure only when the wider evidence meets its threshold.

Owned links that repeatedly say “click here”

The destination becomes unclear when the link is read out of context. This is a navigation and comprehension problem.

Rewrite the anchor to describe the next page concisely.

A linked image with keyword-stuffed alt text

Google may use the alt value as anchor text. When an image is the only content of a link, its text alternative should identify the destination or action.

Write alt text for the image or linked action, not as a hidden anchor field.

Google confirms in its image guidance that an image's alt text can serve as anchor text when the image is a link. The text alternative also serves an accessibility purpose and depends on the image's role. W3C's functional-image guidance explains when to name the linked action and when nearby link text makes an empty alt appropriate.

An anchor audit that changes the work

  1. Group by destination. A homepage, a pricing page, and a research article have different jobs. Grouping makes it possible to read whether the labels fit each destination; it does not assume a secret URL-level quota.
  2. Preserve source URLs and exact strings. A category-only export loses the pattern you need to investigate. Keep the source page, target, anchor, rel values, placement location, and first and last observed dates.
  3. Join acquisition records. Mark links as independent editorial, owned, compensated, exchanged, user-generated, unknown, or obvious scraper noise. “Unknown” is a prompt to investigate, not permission to invent a backstory.
  4. Read the passage. Decide whether the link helps the source page's reader and accurately sets an expectation for the destination. Anchor categories alone cannot answer either question.
  5. Act on the relationship and pattern. Fix vague internal links, correct factual mislabels when a publisher is receptive, qualify compensated links, and stop coordinated commercial-anchor campaigns. Leave independent editorial wording alone merely because a quota sheet dislikes it.

The acquisition relationship carries the policy risk

Google's link-spam policy specifically names optimized anchor text in paid advertorials, guest posts, and distributed press releases. It also names buying or selling links for ranking, automated link creation, excessive exchanges, low-quality directories, and distributed template links. The anchor can make control visible, but the scheme does not become compliant when the buyer swaps “best payroll software” for a brand name.

This leads to a more useful remediation rule: if the problem is a controlled link scheme, repair or end the scheme. Do not merely rotate anchors until the chart looks organic. If the link is paid, ask the publisher to use rel="sponsored" or nofollow, or remove it. The rel attribute follows the relationship, not an anchor category. If an independent editor selected the wording, do not ask them to manufacture a different ratio for you.

What to specify in future outreach

Supply the correct URL, explain what the resource contains, and identify the reader for whom it may be useful. A defensible link-building brief starts with that page, audience, and business result. Let an independent publisher decide whether to cite it and how to describe it. If compensation or another material arrangement controls the placement, treat it as advertising and qualify the link. Wanting editorial wording, guaranteed placement, a followed link, and ranking credit at the same time is not a sophisticated brief. It is a request to make an advertisement look unbought.

For internal links, you do control the wording. Use that control to help people navigate: make the link specific enough to make sense, keep it concise, and place it in a sentence where the destination is a genuine next step. That is both the user-facing rule and Google's published advice.

Primary references

Reviewed 14 August 2026.