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Does anyone know what Google considers to be a “hidden link?”
For instance, my business logo appears on every page of my site. Within this logo is a "non-visible" link to take visitors back to my homepage. I have read that this is a standard website navigation convention. But is it considered a "hidden link?"
Also, what about *any* image that contains a link? There are instances where you may be able to click a text link OR an image near the text link. Is that image/link considered a "hidden link?"
Thanks!
I think that kind of thing would probably qualify as a hidden link, therefore being a no-no. :)
jomaxx: Yes, I did mean setting BORDER=0
It can be difficult because as a marketer AND website owner I want to do what's right for my customers...that means ensuring they find the exact content they are searching for. Sometimes a few techniques (not blatant scumbag spam) can help.
I'm so paranoid lately that I wonder if it would be worth it to have (for example) three separate websites each containing their own product categories rather than three product categories on one website.
Any experiences with this?
As a general rule, a link should be there for your visitors to clic on and follow. Having your logo established as a link to your home page, even with a border=0, is quite a common navigation practice on the web and would not qualify as "hidden link". (if visitors cant see it, then it's not hidden).
Any link that can't be seen by a human visitor like 1 pixel images, x-small text, text with same color as background (or very close color), links in hidden or offscreen layers, etc... is a "hidden link" and could lead to a penalty.
Even if the algorithm cannot always detect it (for now), it could be detected tomorrow, as more rules are added.
Keep in mind that, the higher you're ranking, the more your pages will be examined by your competitors, who would surely not hesitate to report your hidden stuff, if any.
As long as a site isn't reaching the top in the SERPs, spam could go unnoticed, but once it's coming closer to the much appreciated #1 position, a "dirty page" won't stay there for long, hopefully! :)
Dan
Can we take it that such invisible links will be ignored by the algorithm from here on? I sent you an example last month of a company using this heavily over several sites. Did you get it?
At some point I remember making them smaller clear gifs to avoid them getting clicked, probably 4x4, and the destination pages eventually dropped out of the index. Raised the size up around 20x20, they were back in after a couple months.
I suppose this could get the customer a penalty now, who knows? I don't work with them anymore, so nothing I can do for them... except laugh if they get dropped.
Anyway, I would think Googlebot is smart enough to figure out that if an image is 1x1 pixels, people would probably not see it, much less be able to get their mouse over it.
Maybe a couple of times a month I come across a Google search with results that are clearly not kosher - I always report these and the ones I remember to check up on later are always fixed three or four months later.
I'm pretty sure Google has learned from a few mistakes in the past, (well at least one where a cross-linking penalty went mad and banned many mom and pop sites) and now prefers to either ignore "bad" pages OR only apply a ban when a site shows evidence of a number of techqiues and extents of use of them. Its like a report book. If you slip up two or three times you are probably seen as innocent until proven guilty. But when your site shows evidence of lots of smarty pants techniques and "possible spam" patterms then you get hit!
Especially things that we have always done well befor google like using border-0 cause we didnt want that bloody ugly blue or purple line boxing in our transparant gifs.
Since i accepted this, i dont worry about small things like this, and sorta trust the google algo enuff to forgive a few truly innocent mistakes.
This is just a theory.
Yes, I reported them, and nothing happened. Anyway, it's not important to me whether or not these people eventually receive a manual penalty. My point here is: Google claims that their algo can detect this type of spam, and that's clearly not true.
