What Google says about anchor text
We read Google's page on how to write links on 9 October 2026. Google says anchor text tells people and Google what the linked page is about. Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably short, and relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it points to.
- Bad examples Google gives: click here, read more, website and article.
- A test Google suggests: read the anchor text on its own. If it does not make sense without the sentence around it, make it more descriptive.
- Not too long: Google lists very long anchor text as bad too.
- No stuffing: Google advises against forcing keywords into anchor text.
- Space between links: Google advises against chaining several links together with little text between them.
A made-up example
A bakery in Indore has a blog post about birthday cakes. It links to the page where customers place orders.
- Weak: to order, click here.
- Better: order a custom birthday cake in Indore.
The second version says where the link goes. It also makes sense when you read it on its own, without the sentence around it.
Links that are images
When an image is the link, Google uses the image's alt text as the anchor text. Google lists an empty alt on an image link as bad, and an empty link with no text as bad too.
Where you can see anchor text
The Links report in Google Search Console has a table called top linking text. It shows the most common anchor text used in links to your site. Google says the report is a sample and not a full list.
When anchor text becomes spam
Google's spam policies list links with optimised anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases spread on other sites as an example of link spam.
Here is our advice for your own pages. Write each link the way you would say it aloud, and do not repeat the same phrase every time.
Common mistakes
- Using click here or read more everywhere.
- Writing a whole sentence as anchor text.
- Using the same keyword phrase for every link to a page.
- Linking a word that does not match the page it leads to.
Related terms
- Backlink: a link to your site from another site.
- Internal linking: links between pages of the same site.
- Alt text: a written description of an image.
- Link building: the work of earning links from other sites.
- On-page SEO (search engine optimisation): the work you do on the page itself.
Read how links and crawling fit together in our Googlebot crawling guide. For help with your site's links, see our SEO work.
Sources
- Google Search Central, "Link best practices for Google" (developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable), read 9 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide (developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide), read 9 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, "Spam policies for Google web search" (developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies), read 9 October 2026.
- Google Search Console Help, Links report (support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9049606), read 9 October 2026.
