Might seem like a dumb question, but do you use alt="..." tags in a text link? I notice that when I did, there wasn't any alt tag popup when hovering over the link.

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

you can add a title for your text links.... eg.

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Oh, I see. It's title and not alt. Thanks for the info.

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

Alt text on an image appears on mouse over.

I do believe that title displays in the status bar (and possibly mouse over if you have it set in your browser) what you want it to.

It's used a lot on black hat type deals. Saying they will end you to page A, and actually send you to page B. Or just to make the title empty, so you don't know the site you are going to.

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The title attribute will show up on mouse over as the alt does for images, the url of the link will show in the status bar.

There's nothing black hat about it, in fact it's used widely here in the forums to give a little more information about many of the links.

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OverSite.US | A Unique Web Directory
Real Estate Directory | A regional listing of quality real estate related web sites.
Tampa Bay Fishing | Seeks references from the area resource pages of quality local sites.

I try to use it on my links. I think it goes back to an article I read about websites being accessible for the visually impaired. Yes, I know it is already text, but, it still may help someone. You never know what someone likes to read and you can use it to describe the text link that may make more since to someone like this.

Your text link reads "search Atlanta Real Estate" you might add a different description like "View Atlanta homes for sale" which is more descriptive, but, your anchor text is still the way you want for SEO. This doesn't seem black hat to me. It seems like it could be helpful as a description of what the link is taking them to.

I could be wrong...

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Ryan Ward, REALTOR® - Keller Williams Realty Consultants. (404) 630-3187
Atlanta Real Estate - My featured area is Alpharetta Real Estate and it is where I call home. Read my Atlanta Real Estate blog.

My black hat comment, was for when people would change what appeared in the status bar(mouse over link to page b, and have it be blank), not this mouse over text.

I thought the title did both, but I was mistaken

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What is somewhat annoying to me is the fact that within Internet Explorer the alt tag will get you the hover/popup window, however, in firefox, you need to use the title tag to get the same outcome, alt tag doesn't cut it. There are times when I use both, because I believe the hover/popup window is useful to visitors.

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