Can you leverage "Anchor Context" for SEO? Google tells us to place <links> in relevant context, but most folks don't realize how Google can use those signals to evaluate links and ultimately rank webpages. A patent by Anna Patterson and Paul Haahr (two titans of Google search), "Ranking based on reference contexts" explains how Google can utilize RARE words before and after the anchor text to determine context Google can then use this context as a *distinct* ranking factor Google’s API leak documents attributes that measure this exact thing: fullLeftContext, fullRightContext, and context2 — defined as “a hash of terms near the anchor.” Patterson and Haahr explain that Google can rank pages “based on the number of different contexts associated with the links” More diverse + relevant contexts = good. On the other hand, if a lot of "contexts" look suspiciously similar, Google could label the links as spam Importantly, Google talks about finding the "rare" words around the anchor text - words found with greater frequency than the rest of the page. Most people—and link-building platforms—focus on anchor text and stop there. But context can be important!