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can anyone help me?
i have a free onlinecounter and wanted to keep it ad-free. i decided to take a 3x3 pixel transparent gif ot get the external links, but google is not showing any of them as links.
does google ignore linked transparent gif's?
thx
Too many people have used the small gif/jpeg stuffed with ALT text to try and cheat their way to the top.
If any of these specific file sizes have links associated with them, they are flagged as suspicious.
Try putting hidden links inside DIVs instead, and z-index them so they lie behind other page elements.
just another way to do hidden text. I'd report that in to Google as spammage in a heartbeat.
Jim
People who cry wolf eventually have a cause to really cry spammage, but by that time the SE in question may be ignoring them...
Basically, be sure of your facts first.
You may get away with it or not (sounds like you are not), but there's no question that Google does not like it.
However, say you become #1 on the search results. Your competitors will look at your source. They'll see what you have done, and they'll send emails to Google informing Google that a site that breaks the rules is top of the index.
Your site will have, at best a -ve PR adjustment made on it. It may become a PR0 for a while. It may also become a no-PR at all, or banned site. But unlike deep crawls etc you will not remain top until the next dance. Google can immediately penalize a site. One minute #1, next minute number 6bn out of....6bn.
Your choice. Be top of the index for a while with tricks, but possibly suffer, or, read the best practices, take the time to build a positive and ethical web presence and do well that way.
"Try putting hidden links inside DIVs instead, and z-index them"
Yuck / very old / I am certain Google will can any site doing this. And how hard would it be for them to do a search for sites that us negative - elements, and + elements that seem to be too close to other / the real html? Not difficult at all.
If I found a site doing this, I would feel safe in reporting it.
logen
Transparent .gifs are common for navigation bar graphics, and as such, I doubt Google would penalise for them. I suspect they are more adept at translating what sort of page these link toi, rather than the fact they link to that page.
One thing that I do not do is use any height and/or width attributes for the images.
Me, Mr bad Webmaster has a PRzero or banned site. I implement your counter in my page. So now you have an inward link from a bad neighborhood. Do you really want that link?
Are backlinks really worth all that much to you that you'd risk the above? Remember only PR4 and higher ranked pages generate a backlink point.
There are far more pages with PR<4 on the web than there are the other way around....
Or am I missing the point?
You want people to be able to click through to your site, right?
Scott
Logen, why not just ask for a text link like "free counter by myfreecounter.com" or something, or like Marketing Guy says, just link the counter graphic, or do something else that the users can see like a logo or something?
(Wooohooo, 100 posts!)
If the user cant use it, then it's for the purpose of SEO.
Scott
If the point is a hidden link, then I say SPAM!
In principle I agree with this.
However, I doubt that you'd be flagged for penalty, even under a manual review. You are provided a service, so the link seems "fair" to me.
A 1x1 transparent gif is always the same size...
That's only true if the color lookup table is also reduced to 1 color (transparent). But you can force more colors into the table - up to 256 - and this will increase the file size even though the entire image is only using one color.
I'd think there's something more like OCR at work here...looking directly at small file size linked images to see if there's any variation in the pixels. Even just filtering for images that are rendered small but linked would pick up a lot...after all, in Google's eyes, what purpose is there for a site visitor in a link that can barely be detected?
there are so many tricks that Google and the other SE cannot look for them all.
You said it. But guarding against link spam is a BIG deal, because it strikes at the heart of Google's algorithm. I assume that they are quite intense in this particular area of spam guarding.
Ash
If you already have the traffic, why do you need to publicize it? If you are lacking traffic, you surely don't want visitors to know about the lack of traffic.
Keep your site looking professional. In my opinion, site counters make a site look amateurish. Note that none of the Internet heavyweights use page counters.
If you want to keep track of visitors, get a real web host that provides stats.
Ted
@Marketing_Guy
why is this spam?
it's a free service with 2 links in it. the people can press the counter an get to the counterpage, but google doesn't follow the link (because the link is generated in the script), that's the reason why the trans.gif is there.
Here's the code:
<script src="http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/xxx.cgi?color=111111&xxx">© by mydomain.com</script><a href="http://www.mydomain.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.mydomain.com/counter/trans.gif" border="0"></a>
the <script> - Tag will the be replaced with "123 users are on this site right now" and the numer is a link to the page - so anyone can click on it.
i don't think this can be rated as spam.
Here's another reason to just use a plain, visible link: If your gimmick does ever get caught by one of Google's algorithms, you're putting at risk the sites of everyone using your free service. How would you like to wake up and find that every website using your counter was PR0'd?
Like I said earlier, add a brief credit using the NOSCRIPT tag. I don't think anyone would call that inappropriate.
