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I'm programmer first and a reluctant webmaster second. I'm used to having to find workarounds for bugs in Windows. Complaining to Microsoft is truly a wast of time.
It seems to me that there has been much discussion lately about panalties arising from hidden text - even to the point of pages being removed from the Google index. Since I don't use hidden text, I cannot comment from my own experience, but I can look at this issue objectively.
There are three possible policies a search engine can take when encountering hidden text/links, etc.
1: Take no special actions.
2: Ignore all such text, etc. Quite literally, pretend it isn't there.
3: Apply some sort of penalty.
Now lets look at how/why hidden text might be created.
1: As a deliberate attempt to spam search engines.
2: By accident. (Probably applies mostly to zero-length links).
3: Deliberately but without any intention to spam. For instance, a Webmaster might leave himself a todo list in white text in an empty table cell.
Now lets look at how a spammer might fool a search engine.
1: Use very bright gray text against white, etc. (Presumably search engines that worry about hidden text implement thresholds).
2: Use javascript to change background/text colors. (I imagine this can be done with tables but I've never tried it.)
Let's be realistic about this. There is not a snowball's chance in hell of a search engine being able to analyse all the javascript on a page to see if it is being used to hide text. It therefore follows that a spammer will be able to fool search engines using hidden text with no difficulty at all.
It therefore follows that applying penalties where hidden text is found is a total waste of time (if the intention is to combat spam). This just leaves two sensible policies for hidden text.
1: Take no special actions.
2: Ignore all such text, etc. Quite literally, pretend it isn't there.
Now none of this is rocket science. Indeed, if the boffins at Google can't work this out for themselves, they must be suffering from a combined IQ of a retarded chimpanzee.
So, let's see what GG has to say. Do Google boffins shuffle around on their knuckles? Judging from the mess Google is in right now it's easy to laugh and just say yes but the answer in reality is probably no. Nevertheless, given that it is child's play to use hidden text in a manner that can't be detected by search engines, I think it behoves GoogleGuy to say definitively what the policy is. After all, as I have explained, penalties are more likely to catch the innocent than the spammer.
Welcome. I'm new myself.
Yeah, you may get penalized. But the really good news is that GoogleGuy said the hidden text penalty is only thirty days. So before you know it you'll be back in. And you don't even have to say you're sorry.
While submitting your site can get you listed, you might drop out if you don't have anyone else linking to your site. And if you do have anyone else linking to you, then you don't really need to submit, google will find you on their own.
Keep your site clean and get some incoming links.
I certainly believe in 5 years or so people will find this approach a bit strange.
One of my worries is this is just the beginning. I hope that designers of other search engines, like FAST have been reading this thread and take on board some of my comments and go in a different direction.
Now that Google have the technology to penalize sites for a month or so at a time, the temptation will be to find more ways to use it. Now that is scary!
Oh yes, and most of my site has vanished from Google again. Nothing to do with penalties, just the reinstatement of indexes from around February. Yet Google would have us believe that they have a foolproof algo for detecting hidden text. Is there a recognised character combination to represent a raised eyebrow?
Yeahrightwhatever. What I usually say to people who have strong opinions about how search engines ought to work is, build your own. That way you can implement all your own ideas, and there's always lots of room in the world for a better search engine.
Yeahrightwhatever. What I usually say to people who have strong opinions about how search engines ought to work is, build your own.
Lol .. well said ;)
Google currently provides anywhere from 60%-90% of traffic for the average site. Google clearly has extreme dominance over web searches. Therefore Google should behave in a responsible way and not attempt to police the web by removing sites for something petty like hidden text.
If Amazon.com or CNN.com started using hidden text and got banned by Google, would that in anyway provide better results for searchers? No.
I don't have hidden text on any of my pages and I would never use them. Why? Because it's very easy to incorporate relevant text/keywords on a page without using hidden text. Some of your users will eventually notice the "invisible" keywords and it looks pretty amateurish. However - just because it doesn't affect me personally doesn't mean I wont speak out about it.
This once again leads up to my original point. Most of you WANT more strict penalties and more sites banned because you want less sites in the index. The less sites there are in the index...the less people to compete with.
Why not locate the hidden text and completely ignore it and not offer any value for the keywords? That's a resonable and common sense way to deal with it.
If Google was the only search engine in existence, building a big commercial website that you rely on for all your business maybe wouldn't be worth the risk any more. If there was only Google, there would be less websites overall. And IMO the search engines should have some quality standards of their own, like they (or Google, at least) insist everyone else should have. And that would include not banning anyone without a proper explanation.
Patrick
As for the argument that I should develop my own search engine if I don't like the others, then perhaps I should develop my own OS because I don't like windows, develop my own car engine because I think Ford's (or anybody else's) generate too much CO2. Continue that argument, and you would end up never complaining about anything - I guess that would mean that the world was perfect, no compaints = no problems = perfection.
Wow, I've just found the answer to meaning of life, or at least how to create Utopia. Make it an offence, punishable by your own death and that of all your offspring if you make a complaint. Darwin (un)natural selection will then make sure that Utopia becomes a reality in just a few generations.
I think I'll apply to the Nobel comittee for a prize. After all, it's not every day that someone devises a fool-proof plan to create Utopia.
kaled,
Seems fair enough to me! Break the rules and you risk the consequences. I've broken them in the past and suffered. I didn't complain, I learnt and moved on.
I could understand this argument if it was occuring in 1996 - not when hidden text has been grounds for removal for years!
Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
I'm lead to believe that :-
Hidden links are used for functional reasons. (Though I don't know why myself).
Cloaking is widely used by major sites
Pages with irrelevant keywords don't attract a ban by algo and neither do cross-linked sites and duplicate content.
Google have arbitrarily decided to pick on hidden text for automatic bans. I don't have a problem with spam sites being banned. What I have a problem with is sites being banned that may well be relevant to users.
IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THAT A SITE THAT HAS HIDDEN TEXT IS IRRELEVANT TO USERS.
Many (if not most) website designers use WYSIWYG editors. It therefore follows that hidden text may be difficult to spot by (some) website designers. It therefore follows that some hidden text will appear by accident. It therefore follows that some pages (and possibly whole sites) will vanish from the Google index by accident. It therefor follows that users will be denied access to pages (because they can't find them). Given that the decision to ban hidden text will do nothing to stop spam, it therefor follows that the results given to users will actually be worse (at least in the short term).
Just exactly what part of this argument do people not understand?
I don't think it gets much clearer than that.
>Given that the decision to ban hidden text will do nothing to stop spam, it therefor follows that the results given to users will actually be worse (at least in the short term).
Frankly, why should I care. That is a problem for Google and searchers who (if dissatisfied) will move elsewhere - and the people who have all their eggs in one basket and designed sites poorly.
Frankly, why should I care.
Yes, I think that sums it up for a lot of people. Of course, they'll change their tune if they get banned.
Why should I care? The hidden text algos are unlikely to punish my site - the design is far too plain and boring - I believe that content is king.
Neverthless, unlike many contributors to this thread, I recognise that I am fallible and I might, while experimenting with fonts, etc., accidentally create, and leave in some hidden text.
If I did, it would be very easy for the Google algo to spot and it would be banned. WHY?
Also, as a programmer, I know that we (programmers) are fallible. If Google have a program that can detect most forms of hidden text, there is a very high probability that it will generate some "false positives". That means some sites that are 100% innocent will be banned. Not only that, Google won't even have the common decency to email the victims.
As for not placing all your eggs in one basket, that is undoubtedly a good policy and I would certainly advocate it. However, small and/or new businesses may not have this luxury.
Of course, we all know that the big internet players won't be banned by Google. It therefore follows that this change will bias Google results (albeit in a small way) towards the big players. Perhaps Google's underware is beginning to show!
I like kaled's Darwinian metaphor. The gene for hiding text is like the gene for screaming loudest.
Patrick
FWIW, if you have a site with hidden text that has been "banned" - you can have to re-instated by removing the hidden text and waiting for the next update. IMO get yourself back into the results, read WW for the next month or so, and then worry about "optimizing".
Patrick
Trust me, I've probably had more bans from Google than you have had hot dinners. It hasn't changed my tune a jot!
Trust me, I've probably had more bans from Google than you have had hot dinners. It hasn't changed my tune a jot!
Sounds like you have some experience as a spammer (in the past of course - I'm sure it's behind you now). So tell us, in your irresponsible youth, would you have been worried by Google banning hidden text?
It doesn't sound like you're worried now, and I don't think you'd have worried then either. This rather backs my point. Spammers will not be worried by the hidden-text penalty. In other words, it is the innocent who will suffer most.
Kaled.
PS
Those that had an opinion on the legal aspects of my argument might find the thread [webmasterworld.com ] interesting. (Esp the court ruling)
Whilst the court did not support my own view, the details of the ruling suggest that I was not being entirely frivolous as some people thought.
Obviously everybody is talking about this one month ban for hidden text and hidden links and that such penalty will dessapear automatically after a month
Can I just ask, where has anybody found out about this (link if possible please) and whether this is a reliable source?
At the end of the day it could be something somebody just say and it has just spread out
Thanks very much
"Automatic penalties (e.g. hidden text) tend to expire automatically after a period of time."
Sorry, but I read it a couple of hours ago and can't remember exactly which thread.
Patrick
What is spam today was "cutting edge" a few years ago :)
I've always tried to be reasonably on the "cutting edge", but with my eye far more on the self-appointed spam-cops rather than the SEs. If my work won't appear on their radar - then it should pass any SE inspection! However, my job - however you try to "spin" it - is manipulating search engine results. So many would still call me a spammer - many others don't think I am.
Hidden text is unlikely to be used by hardened professionals at this game - but is often used by people who's sole reason for doing it is to add keywords for search engines. I don't think relevancy has anything much to do with search engine spam filters. Only a complete idiot would serve up a page about blue wodgets when a surfer was looking for green widgets. Filters are there to get rid of blatant manipulation - and allowing sites to add words in hidden text is just that.
I have seen many sites where the site owner admitted quite freely that they added hidden text because they thought it would "trick the search engines". Maybe getting rid of the obvious ways of tricking engines might make this method die out.
The argument here appears to be that banning hidden text will penalize the innocent. Mine is that ignorance of the rules is no excuse.
But for those that do know, be prepared for search engines to enforce their rules - fair or unfair. I see nothing wrong in that, currently it is their game, their rules and they are the umpires. Keep within the rules and you should be OK - break them knowingly or unknowingly and you may be sent off!
They may change the rules tomorrow and I may not like it - but that's all part of the game too.
Welcome to the world of search engine marketing!
[edited to remove waffle]
Well here seem to be a great deal of Macho posturing and testosterone within this posting.
You could all go round in circles ad infintum discussing this - you have your opinions which you are entitled to - Google has there own opinion.
This is all getting a bit boring now - why don't you all get busy with important things like creating decent content for your sites?
[edited by: grifter at 10:44 pm (utc) on May 31, 2003]
I think emotions are running a little bit high at the moment, so I'm not going to bother trying to calm you all down - I'm going to look after the most important thing in my life - my baby boys.
I have had a great time on WW in recent months but I wish you would all calm down -I will not post here any more as I do not wish to be attacked personally
Take Care, hope you all do well with your sites.
However - no one forced you to read and reply to this particular thread :-)
I know no-oned forced me to reply to this topic, but normally this is such a friendly place and a pleasure to visit. Over the last few weeks I have found that people are becoming more stressed and more irate.. I would just like everyone to take a step back and and take stock of what is REALLY important.
Postings are becoming more personal and more insulting. C'mon guys there's no need for this.
Can we not try and get back to being friends and civil in our postings?
Or maybe thats just a girlie point of view?
For sure, Polly, people need to chill somewhat here if they can, but some people are very frustrated with Google and this might be part of the change in tone the last while. Let's not crank it up a notch with sexism.
No sexism intendid! I have been through all the same frustrations as you guys in recent weeks with Google, but there is in life differences in Male/Female opinions as I'm sure you've experienced! I just felt that in this thread some people were getting too personal.
I think it is time for me to bow out gracefully before I get in any more hot water.
Peace 'n love, y'all
This is a Google forum. Google is having problems. People are mad/frustrated/annoyed about it. It's only natural. In my opinion, I feel the critisism and anger towards google recently are very well deserved.
Eventually things will get back to the way they were. This isn't the first time Google has went through changes and got everyone in an uproar.
Now bringing the focus back to this particular thread; The people complaining about the hidden text filter are generally correct and present legitimate points. The opposing views being given mostly consist of "So what? Just deal with it?" type of replies, which will certainly only add to the level of frustration.
[edited by: John_Creed at 12:44 am (utc) on June 1, 2003]
John I agree with what you wrote - I dislike hidden text and don't feel sites using it have any particular legal or moral or constitutional right to be represented in Google. Kaled in particular keeps going on about scenarios which may happen in theory, but I don't find that kind of argument too compelling.
But anyway I think you intended to say the opposite, that the people complaining about the hidden text filter are correct.
