Search results of a search query on a network are ranked according to a scoring function that incorporates anchor text as a term. The scoring function is adjusted so that a target document of anchor text reflect the use of terms in the anchor text in the target document's ranking. Initially, the properties associated with the anchor text are collected during a crawl of the network. A separate index is generated that includes an inverted list of the documents and the terms in the anchor text. The index is then consulted in response to a query to calculate a document's score. The score is then used to rank the documents and produce the query results.