Could invisible tracking links catch a hidden links penalty?

What about invisible trackers?

[namniboose]

I know that Google considers invisible links to be spam so that makes me wonder: what about an invisible tracker? Would that not come under the category of an invisible link?

[GoogleGuy]

No, the detection is smart enough to know about tracking links.

[chiyo]

yep, when i asked googleguy this a month or so back he said there is no problem with our case - an invisible link on each page to a third party server that powers our customer service live chat facility.

[namniboose]

Thanks GoogleGuy - I should have guessed that Google would be ahead of the game!

[coolasafanman]

I had several links on my main page leading into my site that provided filters for various different types of users. For example, I carry green, blue and red widgets, but some users may only want to see red, so they click thru the red widget link and it hides all other widgets.

Thinking that these links would drastically reduce the number of pages that show in the index, I changed them to javascript, with the intent that a robot would not follow them and thus all pages would be indexed. Is this the appropriate course of action?

[superba]

My site has dynamic links to pages of for-sale items. I've made a set of .htm pages, one for each item, that will forward users to the appropriate dynamic pages. I am in hopes of getting these .htm pages indexed. Now I see that any list of these indexed .htm pages would itself have to link from our home page. I can't do this with an invisible .gif, right? Any suggestions? thx in advance--I'm in awe of all you geniuses.