---
title: "Does anchor text type actually correlate with Google rankings?"
url: https://seomadman.com/research/anchor-text-type-ranking-correlation-ahrefs-study
section: research
published: 2026-09-22T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-09-22T00:00:00.000Z
author: Adam Hafez
topics: ["Link building"]
---

# Does anchor text type actually correlate with Google rankings?

## The short answer

Ahrefs studied 384,614 pages ranking for 19,840 keywords, controlling for URL Rating, and found exact-match anchor text correlates with rank at just 0.1436 (Spearman, average). Phrase and partial match scored lower still, and random anchor text barely correlated at all. Every anchor text type it tested showed a weak relationship with ranking position, not a strong one.

## Key takeaways

- Ahrefs analyzed 384,614 web pages ranking for 19,840 keywords and controlled for URL Rating to isolate anchor text as a variable.
- Exact-match anchor text had the strongest correlation with rankings in the dataset, and it was still only 0.1436 on average, a weak Spearman value.
- Phrase-match and partial-match anchors scored close to each other, around 0.106 and 0.108, both weaker than exact match.
- Random anchor text, unrelated to the target keyword, correlated at only 0.0161, nearly flat.
- A second test of 16,000 pages found the words surrounding a link's anchor text correlated with rank even more weakly, and one measure was slightly negative.

Anchor text diversity advice is everywhere: keep exact match under some threshold, mix in
branded and generic anchors, avoid looking "unnatural." Almost none of it points to a number.
Ahrefs' anchor text study is the closest thing the industry has to one, because it measured the
actual correlation between anchor text type and rank, at scale, and published the coefficients.

## What Ahrefs actually measured

Ahrefs pulled the top 20 Google results for 19,840 keywords with 2,000 to 5,000 monthly
searches, each 2 to 4 English words with no special characters, for a total of 384,614 web
pages. To isolate anchor text from the other obvious confound, backlink authority, it kept only
keywords where the top 10 ranking pages had similar URL Rating scores, so pages in the sample
were roughly matched on link authority before anchor text was measured.

For every page, Ahrefs calculated what share of its backlinks used exact-match, phrase-match,
partial-match or random anchor text, then ran a Spearman correlation between each share and the
page's ranking position. Spearman correlation, like the Pearson coefficient used in other
ranking-factor studies, runs from -1 to 1, and values below roughly 0.3 are conventionally read
as weak, not values a site owner could use to predict rank from anchor text alone.

## The numbers, and why none of them are strong

Exact-match anchor text came out highest, at 0.1436 average and 0.1869 median, still below the
conventional threshold for even a moderate correlation. Phrase-match and partial-match landed
close together, 0.1057 and 0.1076 on average, statistically indistinguishable from each other in
this dataset. Random anchor text, links using text unrelated to the page's target keyword,
correlated at 0.0161, functionally no relationship at all.

Ahrefs ran a second, separate test on the words surrounding a link rather than the anchor text
itself, using a reduced sample of 16,000 pages, 800 at each ranking position from 1 to 20.
Exact-match keywords in the surrounding text correlated at only 0.0640, and pages with one or
more matching words nearby scored a slightly negative -0.0701, meaning having relevant words
near a link showed no positive association with rank in that sample, and if anything a faint
inverse one.

## Why we care

The consistent pattern across both tests is that anchor text type is a real but small signal,
not the mechanism most link-building advice implies it to be. Exact match beats random match,
which is a defensible, expected result. But the gap between them is the difference between a
correlation of roughly 0.14 and roughly 0.02, both weak, not the difference between a strong
signal and a nonexistent one. Anyone treating anchor text ratios as a lever that reliably moves
rankings is reading more certainty into these numbers than Ahrefs' own study supports; the honest
takeaway is that anchor text relevance helps marginally, and no combination of match types
substitutes for the URL Rating and topical relevance Ahrefs controlled for to isolate it in the
first place.

## Sources

1. [What Is Anchor Text? Everything You Need to Know (No Jargon!)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/anchor-text/) - Ahrefs (primary)