Anchor/Link Count reports how many parsed anchor elements on a page carry an href attribute — the count of real, navigable links in the rendered document. It is a quantity measure only, so it says nothing about whether those links are relevant, useful, or accessible, and more is not automatically better.
| Factor ID | RG-SIZ-001 |
|---|---|
| Family | Page Structure and Size |
| Measurement | Element count |
| Measured zone | Parsed document |
What it measures
Anchor/Link Count reports the number of parsed anchor elements that have an href attribute. In practice that is the count of links a reader could actually follow — anchors without an href (used as bookmarks, script hooks, or placeholders) are not navigable and are excluded. The result is a single number describing how many linking destinations the page exposes, nothing more: it does not weigh whether those links point somewhere valuable or whether they are internal, external, or broken.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear parses the rendered HTML with SwiftSoup, selects a[href], and returns the count of matching elements. The selector keys on the presence of the href attribute, so only anchors that resolve to a destination are counted. Because the measurement runs over the parsed, rendered document, whatever markup exists at capture time — including anchors injected by JavaScript — is what gets counted.
What RankGear looks for
a[href]
<a href="/pricing">Pricing</a> ← counted
<a href="https://ex.com">Docs</a> ← counted
<a name="top">Top</a> ← not counted (no href)How to optimize it
Treat this number as an observation about the page’s link footprint, not a target to inflate. Link to relevant internal and external resources where they genuinely help users navigate, verify claims, or explore related topics; use descriptive anchor text; and keep the destinations live. Because the count reflects quantity rather than quality, a change in the number is a prompt to review what you are linking to and why — not a score to push higher for its own sake.
Important considerations
- This is a quantity measure, not an assessment of quality, relevance, accessibility, or usefulness.
- JavaScript-rendered markup present at capture time can affect the parsed document, and therefore the count.
- Malformed HTML may be normalized by the parser before the anchors are counted.
- Compare competitive evidence, but do not assume more links are always better.
- This is a measured signal that relates to patterns seen across a result set; it does not by itself make a page rank or cause a ranking — correlation is not causation.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.