For a key page, the anchor text pointing to it, its most prominent body terms and the queries it earns clicks for share few terms. Notes of the February 2025 HJ Kim call describe Anchors, Body and Clicks as the key components of Google's topicality score. Disagreement between them is a proxy for a muddled topical signal; the check cannot see T* itself.
Why does anchors, body and queries describe different topics (abc alignment) matter for AI search?
Notes of the February 2025 HJ Kim call describe Anchors, Body and Clicks as the key components of Google's topicality score. Disagreement between them is a proxy for a muddled topical signal; the check cannot see T* itself.
How do you fix it?
Decide the page's topic, then align all three: rewrite internal anchors to describe it, tighten title, headings and lead around it, and split or retarget the page if its winning queries belong elsewhere.
How do you find it on your site?
- Crawl the site and export all internal anchor text pointing to the page; add external anchors from a backlink tool.
- Extract the page's title, H1, headings and first 150 words and list the top 10 non-stop-word terms.
- Export the page's top 20 non-branded queries by clicks from Search Console.
- Flag the page if fewer than half of its top 10 body terms appear in either the anchor set or the query set.
Which ranking and citation factors does it touch?
Written for the ABC signals (Anchors, Body, Clicks) page (evidence: Trial or leak evidence). Google has not documented this system in a way a site can test directly, so this check measures a proxy for it, not the system itself.
What is the impact?
Indirect. Estimate only: most useful on pages that rank for unintended queries.
What is the evidence?
HJ Kim call notes (PXR0356, 18 February 2025), Pandu Nayak's 18 October 2023 testimony on core topicality signals, and the PXR0357 Nayak call notes.
Sources
Frequently asked questions about anchors, body and queries describe different topics (abc alignment)
What does "Anchors, body and queries describe different topics (ABC alignment)" mean?
For a key page, the anchor text pointing to it, its most prominent body terms and the queries it earns clicks for share few terms.
How do you fix anchors, body and queries describe different topics (ABC alignment)?
Decide the page's topic, then align all three: rewrite internal anchors to describe it, tighten title, headings and lead around it, and split or retarget the page if its winning queries belong elsewhere.