This is a study I conducted on my first month (December 2008) of exposure to SEO under "Research and Analysis" team.

Introduction:

The anchor text or link label is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It can be in External Links (links from other sites), internal links (links on your pages), navigation maps, and links on your main page.

It usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you're linking to. It is highly weighted in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page. The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search result. Therefore, the words used as anchor text will be significant for search engine rankings. Anchor text is so important that it's possible for a page to appear in the top 10 in Google's search results for a phrase which isn't mentioned anywhere on the page as for the case of Google Bombing. Though on January 2007, Google created a new algorithm which reduced the impact of many prank Google bombs, but anchor text remains to be very important.

Objective:

This study aims to:

1. Determine the percentage of anchor text containing exact or varied keywords from one-worded, two-worded and three-worded query.
2. Determine the percentage of best anchor text combination between "EXACT anchor text" and "anchor text VARIATION".

Scope and limitations:

This study is limited to 30 samples for each one-worded, two-worded and three-worded query, having a total for 90 samples all in all. Various domain samples having no exact and anchor text variation for keyword query are rejected. Search engine used is limited to www.google.com only. Various past samples which has no exact or anchor text variation is rejected. The researcher limits the study on anchor text alone, though it is highly probable that using less percentage of exact anchor text match in its inbound links will have very little SERP's effect as long as the domain already establishes its topical(domain) authority for certain keywords.

Review of Related Study:

According to www.onestat.com on June 2008, more and more people use 2 word phrases instead of 3 and 1 phrases in search engines. There has been an increase in 2 word phrase queries since October 2007. The percentage of users who used a 2 word phrase query in October was 31.91%, and for May 33.65%. There has been an increase of 1.74% in this period. The one word phrase queries have increased 0.3% and the 3 word phrase queries have reduced 0.75%. The numbers show that people are using larger search phrases, every search query above 6 words has increased since October. The reason for this is that users may find more relevant results using two-worded query because  one-worded query would give too broad results whereas three-worded query would be showing too specific results that search engines may no longer find. The 10 most used numbers of word phrases compared to October 2007 in search engines on the web are:

Research Methodology:

1. All test domains studied are ranking position 1 for google.com for each respected keyword.
2. Inbound links and linking domains are gathered using www.backlinkwatch.com tool.
3. All of the samples are coming from unique domains for each keyword query. Only one sample is studied from domains having several links using different anchor text variations.
4. All samples should contain at least "one-word" query. Data using images to link through test domains are considered null. Below are the rules which are to be applied in differentiating between "Exact Anchor Text" and "Anchor Text Variation"
   • Exact Anchor Text:
     • Exact if and only if the anchor text contains the exact keyword query regardless of "text formatting", i.e, capitalization, color, and etc.
   • Anchor Text Variation:
     • Only singular/plural forms of the keyword query are accepted. Yet, singular/plural forms of keyword which requires a change of spelling, i.e, "jewelries for "jewelry"             are rejected. Also gerund forms like "buying" for keyword "buy" are considered null.
     • For two and three worded query, anchor text should ONLY be separated with spaces. Samples with anchor text separated with dash, period, and other characters are rejected.

Definition of Terms:

Below are the list of terms and definitions used by the researcher thoroughout the presentation of this paper.

• Test Domains – Domains or pages which ranks position 1 for a specific keyword which are to be examined in this paper.
• Linking Domains – Domains or pages where inbound links are found.
• Inbound links – Links coming from outside domain linking to test domains.
• Exact Anchor Text – Anchor text containing the exact keyword query.
• Anchor Text Variation – Anchor text which contains keyword query regardless of its combination, variation, total number of words, or form(plural or singular).
• Null – Samples which are rejected.
• Query – keyword/phrase which is entered in Google search.
• Keyword – Relating to the exact word/variations which are examined through the course of this paper.
• One-worded query – Query which contains only one word i.e., "movies"
• Two-worded query – Query which contains two words, i.e, "watch movies"
• Three-worded query – Query which contains three words, i.e, "watch movies online"
• Domain Authority – Pertains to the sites high page rank, number of quality inbound links and its age.

Related posts:

1. Findings: A Research Study on Exact vs Anchor Text Variation in Links
2. How to Rank in Google Place Results
3. SEO Evolution: Past, Present and Future of Search Quality
4. Finding your No. 1 SEO Competitor
5. Finding the Most Relevant Contact for Link Request