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You
Can't Hide Behind Hidden Text
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When
it comes to search engine optimization, you can't hide from the
search engine spiders. They know all the tricks. And if you think
you've found a way to fool them, think again. They most likely
already have a way to prevent you from doing so. Still, webmasters
spend countless hours trying to develop new, albeit unethical,
ways to get their site to the top of the search engines. One of
the more common tricks used is hidden text -- and search engines
have been known to penalize sites who adopt this technique as
part of their search engine optimization campaign.
Hidden text is not visible to the human eye, yet is still readable by search engine spiders. Webmasters mistakenly believe they can stuff their keywords and keyword phrases in the hidden text to increase their keyword density and improve their rankings - without the search engine spiders ever detecting it. They attempt to "hide" the text using any of the following methods:
Detecting Hidden Text So, how do you know if someone is using hidden text? In some cases, hidden text will be easier to identify than in others. If you find a page with a lot of empty space (usually between the last paragraph of text and the lower navigation structure), hidden text may be used. An easy way to identify hidden text is by clicking and holding down your left mouse button over the suspected area and highlighting it. If words appear that weren't there before, you've just identified hidden text. Spiders Are Smarter Than You Think It may take them a while, but the search engines always find out when new spam tactics surface. Search engine spiders now have the ability to match HTML text color with the background color to easily identify when hidden text is being used. The major search engines, including Google and Yahoo, clearly state their viewpoint on spam as well as their punishment for violators. Here's what Google has to say in their Spam Report about the use of hidden text: "Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises the quality of our results and degrades the search experience for everyone. We think that's a bad thing." Yahoo! shares similar sentiments in its Search Guidelines: "Some pages are created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant or poor-quality search results; this is often called "spam." Yahoo! does not want these pages in the index…Some, but not all, examples of the more common types of pages that Yahoo! does not want to include: ...The use of text that is hidden from the user..." The Bottom Line In
an attempt to improve their search engine rankings, webmasters
try to deceive the search engines into thinking their site is
more important than it really is. But, their feeble attempts
usually backfire. Search engines won't tolerate unethical search
engine optimization practices and will penalize sites that adopt
such tactics. Rather than wasting your time and energy with
spam tactics, focus your efforts on creating a site that employs
ethical search engine optimization strategies, including keyword-rich
content, linking campaigns, and effective website usability.
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