Anchor text
The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, used by search engines as a description of the destination page.
LinksBacklink profile
Link profile
The aggregate characteristics of all links pointing to a site: source diversity, anchor text distribution, follow ratio, topical relevance and acquisition pattern over time.
In full
Profiles are assessed for plausibility rather than size. Natural ones show mostly branded and URL anchors, a mixture of followed and nofollowed links, links to many pages rather than only money pages, and steady rather than spiky acquisition. Anomalies do not automatically cause action, since Google's systems largely ignore what they distrust, but a profile dominated by paid or networked links can attract a manual action.
Example
An audit shows 68% of anchors are exact-match commercial phrases pointing at four pages — a pattern no organic profile produces.
Related terms
Referring domains
The number of unique domains linking to a site or page, generally a more meaningful measure of link popularity than raw backlink count.
Link spam
Google's spam policy category covering links intended to manipulate rankings: buying or selling links, excessive exchanges, automated link…
Toxic links
A vendor term for backlinks judged harmful by a third-party tool's scoring; Google has repeatedly said it has no such classification and…
Disavow links tool
A Search Console tool for asking Google to ignore specified inbound links or domains, intended for sites with a link-related manual action…