Forum Moderators: open
-My first Question is, would having a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent gif on my web page cause me to get penalized or lower my position on SE such as Google and yahoo?
Example, My page "MainSite"was ranked #8 on first page of google for a keyword and about 5 days later it fell to #32 position. The only thing i changed on my site was:
1.put a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent gif link on the bottom of page "MainSite" linking to my site map(i wonted to hide it from competators)
2. I put the same 1 pixel by 1 pixel trasnparent gif on 3 other sites i own that are related, linking back to my "MainSite" index page.
-2nd Question, i also added some numerical page names, would that have caused my dropping in SE position?
Example, lets say my site is targeting key word "keyword"
i named my links /keyword-1.html , keyword-2.html
keyword-3.html etc. Would this have caused the problem.
Any help or input would be very appreciated.
[edited by: Marcia at 5:46 am (utc) on Aug. 8, 2003]
If it were a penalty enough to get you banned you wouldn't be ranking at all. Remember that if it's at all competitive, especially with a one-word search, your competitors are hard at work trying to gain position, so dropping down wouldn't be unexpected.
It really isn't a good idea to use 1 pixel invisible gifs for links. It's an old trick that's just begging for trouble.
About those links to your site from the others that are now using invisible gifs to link - what were those links like before you made the change?
linking to my site map(i wonted to hide it from competators)
I have to ask....why are you concerned about competitors seeing your site map?
Dave
What I was wondering was if the links from the other sites that are now gifs were previously links using anchor text.
If you are in any doubt go to http*//www.bugnosis.org/
Neat little tool which will show you how many sites use 1 * 1 gifs... … for tracking purposes!
Hell, you can get paranoid and ask Brett about WW and the dodgy dealings with [showcase.netins.net...] - campanology? ;)
Rich
- all major sites in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway use 1x1 px gifs - this is done to track traffic, but i can assure you that the use of the gif is no problem with Google or any other SE.
The "competitors <> site map" thing: I don't understand - the reason for providing a site map for the SE's is to get all your pages indexed. As you are doing this, your pages will be found in the search engines anyway, so why hide it?
richardb: campanology? That's bell ringing?
/claus
Rich
Of course they know the difference!
I'd expect that their software has a simple way to class sites as link farms, counter/tracking sites, advert pop-up and banner sites, and so on, and exclude them from the listings.
Get some deodorant ;)
1.put a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent gif link on the bottom of page "MainSite" linking to my site map(i wonted to hide it from competators)
Anyone can crawl your site or download it completely if they wanted. There are a number of shareware programs that can do such a thing.
2 cents
Come to think of it, if I have about 5 spacer images in my site, I could use "ALT" image files on all of them too and probably end up with better ranking.
Does anyone think that google would penalize for ALT image tags on spacers? Target all of them for different keywords. Might help with SEO a little.
Any opinions?
[/Radiolabs]
Does anyone think that google would penalize for ALT image tags on spacers
Penalize? Not that I'm aware of. Ignore? Quite possible.
Mike
No problem with an image on its own. The problem might appear if that image is made into a clickable link to some other page or site.
I might try it out on another site that is not that important and see what happens. If it works, I'll let everyone know. Everyone's got to have one of those disposable sites!
IMO the problem could lie here.
If you renamed files Google will need to spider them. Probably not all renamed pages have been spidered yet. If this is the case, it's only a matter of time before you make to your old position again.
I would give highest weight to 1x1 pixel links that cause your ranking to drop. Google does not penalize the whole site for 1x1 pixel links, but downgrade any the relevant keywords that it used to give to that page. That is why your PR may not be affected, but your ranks just drop dramatically - eg. from page 1 to page 10 or more.
The story of same IP address, numerical page names and 1 pixel gif are NOT the cause of your problem.
The earliest incidence that I believe Google had applied this 1 pixel link filter is around the time of Dominic or a little after, but I could be wrong...After you remove these 1 pixel links, it could take you around 1 month to have your rank restored.
I removed the 1 x 1 invisible pix from the other 3 sites and will let everyone know if it made a difference.
Also, what does "IMO" stand for.
Thanks
I have never like 1-pixel spacers. They always seemed like a code-bloat badly thought out kludge, used in place of more logical code. Now that CSS is well supported they can all be removed.
If I use one character link ( e.g. : "Tot<a style="text-decoration:none" href="abc.html">a</a>l") other then 1x1 pixel, is it ok for google or it is spam?
