One observation I have had recently with web development firms and SEO companies is that they appear to be employing a very interesting tactic in relation to the anchor text links on their webpage footers that potentially are designed to affect Google Instant results.
It began as an observation. I clicked on a link located on a website footer only to discover three quarters of the word hotlinked, though masked by CSS. Weird. Why would anyone do that?
e.g. Google Instant Trick
Next I saw it the following day, I saw the same thing on a differing website. Conincidence or have web developers gone mad and were just so excited about linking a domain that they couldn’t wait to highlight the entire word?
Then it dawned that this could be a small stroke of genius:
Hotlink an incomplete word > because there is not much competition on that incomplete phrase / word, it will possess strong potential for a high ranking > bank on people getting three quarter way through typing their phrase before selecting a result from Google Instant and hey presto you have beaten your competition.
Nifty and crafty.
Though I do agree this is a bit of a long bow conclusion, but I think an interesting one. What are your thoughts? Do you agree? Is it the work of Google Genius’s manipulating Google Instant or just the work of inept webmasters?
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I think you can safely assume that tactic is misguided. Google display the search result for the predicted result, not the result as its typed.
Good job though as otherwise I think we’d be a in a world of pain with incomplete anchor text links everywhere!