Does Statcounter Hurt Google Rankings?

Does Google penalize Statcounter.com's blind links?

[Pyeman73]

I work with a really talented SEO technician. He was looking at my blog the other day and said I should be careful using Statcounter.com (which is currently installed on each and every page). I asked him why, and he said that the reason SC has a Google PR of 9/10 is that it includes blind links to itself on every page where its tracking code is installed. I checked, and he was right in my case.

5 days later, my site has been removed from Google and my traffic has been cut in half. Old keywords I used to get tons of traffic from have been completely removed from Google's index. My domain name doesn't even show up in a search. Vanished. Poof.

It's just a blog and not a revenue stream - I'm sure I'll figure out what's wrong and get back into Google eventually - but this really sucks. Especially since I was enjoying Statcounter and use it on 4 other sites which DO pull in a bit of AdSense revenue. I'm worried they're in danger of being blacklisted as well.

Is there any truth to this? I know Google penalizes blind links and it makes sense. But it's hard to imagine such a popular and useful tool being so detrimental. I have looked for info about this online and found nothing. I'd love to hear what you all think or have experienced.

- Dave

[andrew2]

what's a "blind link"?

[skippy]

Welcome to Webmasterworld Pyeman73 and andrew2

You are giving Stats Counter a back link that is all. So you are giving away some Page Rank. That should be the only effect of using the service. I have used them on a couple of sites and have not noticed any downgrade in rankings for those sites.

The “blind link” he is referring to is that it is not visible to a viewer of the website.