I'm no longer seeing different results or different numbers of results for any searches I perform at Google with inanchor and allinanchor. I can't find any official reference to this change, but since they were working in January, my initial assumption is that BigDaddy caused the effect, which is why some folks can still see the allinanchor results on certain datacenters (or for certain phrases).
If you've got any substantive data or links to point to that would help to make this more official, that would be greatly appreciated.
Luckily, we can use MSN's "inanchor" command still - note the syntax here - allinanchor doesn't work so inanchor: must be placed in front of each term. Sadly, MSN's number of reported results are so far off, the data is not currently of much help.
I'm also interested in what you mean by that.
I did a second search on a phrase where a site holds an allinanchor ranking of #1 but is currently found at #251 in a normal google search for the phrase.
The allinanchor:keyword phrase showed at #1.
Could you explain what you mean by that, Michael.
Dave
Michael - I appreciate your effort - thanks. It appears to me that, at the very least, the value of the query is very questionable and certainly inconsistent.
I'll ask someone here to take a careful look at many results with the modifier in a few weeks when we're more certain that BigDaddy has settled.
I just checked the Pravda link in MSN, and 7 out of the 12 links pointing to that page had "military influence" in the anchor text, exact phrase. You have to check the cached version of the page in most cases (MSN's cache, I didn't check Google's cache) You can't use the link: command in Google and expect to get accurate results.
What would be really nice would be an "allanchor" search, returning all the pages using that anchor text in links on their page. :)
Or even better, a regex search on the raw html.
I see no official documentation, but if you perform an advanced search in google, uncollapse "Date, usage rights, region, and more," click "Where your keywords show up," and choose "in links to the page," you will see that Google populates a new search operator for you called "allinlinks"
I tried it, and it works.
Michael - but no official word or sites you can reference on the subject?
And what do you mean by "placebo"? Why, for example is a search for military influence so different from an allinanchor search for the same thing? (I see 36.5 million results for one and 525 for the other with far different sites showing up).
What's your contention? That these results are flukes or "fakes", or that they're accurate but that Google is only showing allinanchor searches for some results or on some datacenters?
BTW: I'd regret to see allinanchor and allintitle gone. First G removed descriptions of these operators. If they are eliminating the effectiveness and visibility of the allinanchor operator it will negate all I ever did, at the beginning, to get better serps. Anchor text and google bombing...could it be that will be a relic of the past, something to place in the SEO museum for 2004 and 2005
Dave - what terms did you use? I've only been able to get results that differed from the "normal" searches with two keyword sets relating to a client. Everything else I try comes up same number of results and same exact SERPs (on every datacenter I know of).
twenty minutes after your original post, i went to mcdar's datacenter watch tool, and performed the following search:
allinanchor:"online casinos"
results *did* vary across mcdar's six default datacenters:
64.233.161.105 64.233.161.147 64.233.171.99 64.233.171.104 64.233.171.105 64.233.171.147
however, ten minutes later, i went back and performed the search again - all results were identical across datacenters. all subsequent searches for different terms were identical across datacenters as well.
maybe they had rolled out some changes that just hadn't propagated completely when i first checked, but had finished ten minutes later? anyway, interesting stuff and good find.
I emailed you the keyword phrase. allinanchor and allintitle results were slightly different than serps on both big daddy and non big daddy dcs.
I performed both allinanchor and inanchor searches today on both big daddy and non big daddy dcs. Both worked.
We must be in different universes