This factor counts how many keyword variations appear inside <u> elements on the page. It is a raw occurrence count over the cleaned contents of underlined or annotated spans, not a quality score — and it relates to position within a measured result set, it does not make a page rank.
| Factor ID | RG-KWD-089 |
|---|---|
| Family | Keyword Usage & Density |
| Measurement | Variation occurrence count |
| Measured zone | Cleaned u contents |
What it measures
RankGear looks specifically at text wrapped in <u> elements — the underline or annotation tag — and counts the keyword variations that occur there. The output is a simple tally of variation matches inside those elements, capturing how often a page places a keyword or its variants in underlined, annotated copy rather than in ordinary body text.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear extracts the bounded contents of each <u> element, cleans the HTML from that text, and then sums case-insensitive, whole-word matches against the keyword variation set. Matching is whole-word, so partial substrings are not counted, and it is case-insensitive, so capitalization does not change the tally. Only text inside a real <u> tag is considered.
What RankGear looks for
<u>keyword variation</u>
<u>another annotated phrase</u>How to optimize it
Use <u> only where its semantic annotation is genuinely appropriate and will not be mistaken for a hyperlink. Treat this count as an observation about your markup, not a target to inflate — do not underline keywords solely to move this metric. If underlining a variation reads naturally and serves the reader, the occurrence is incidental; if it does not, forcing it in only creates confusion.
Important considerations
- CSS underlining (for example
text-decoration: underline) without an actual<u>tag does not count — only the element itself is measured. - HTML is cleaned from the
<u>contents before matching, so nested markup does not distort the count. - Underlining can create usability confusion, because readers often expect underlined text to be a link.
- Do not underline keywords solely to raise this metric.
- This is a correlation-based signal tied to position within a measured result set. A higher count does not cause or guarantee a ranking.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.