If you are a patent junky, then you may like this relatively new one. A patent application submitted November 19th by Google named artificial anchor for a document may shed some light on the jump down Google snippets or anchor based Google Sitelinks we have seen creep into the Google search results in August and September.
As always, Bill Slawski converts the patent into English for all of us to read. But here is the abstract:
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for linking to an intra-document portion of a target document includes receiving an address for a target document identified by a search engine in response to a query, the target document including query-relevant text that identifies an intra-document portion of the target document, the intra-document portion including the query relevant text. An artificial anchor is generated, the artificial anchor corresponding to the intra-document portion. The artificial anchor is appended the address.
Currently, I am way too tired to look into this right now, so just hit the thread at WebmasterWorld to dig deeper.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.