Text close to background color - Trouble?

When is close to close?

[tesla]

If you have text on a colored background, how different should the colors be in order to stay on the search engines good side. I have Black text on a Navy blue backgound and I recently saw this on a monitor that generally represented colors darker than they should be. It alarmed me because while the text was still readable, it could be precieved as trying to hide text in the background. Any good rule of thumbs here?

THanks,

[pageoneresults]

tesla, its a user issue really. If someone needs to squint or move closer to their monitor to see something, then it should be addressed.

Black on a dark navy background has got to be difficult to read for most. The SE's would not detect this automatically but any sort of human review would. I'm not saying you are hiding text and I doubt very seriously that a human review would either. It all comes down to the user. If they can't see it, then you might want to consider a different color combination.

There should always be plenty of contrast between text and background colors. Usability surveys show that text on dark color backgrounds is a users pet peeve.

[Beachboy]

Google doesn't appear to have any automated way of determining when someone is using invisible type, although other search engines do (I hear.) However if flags your site for human review (due to someone reporting you for spamming), you could have a problem. I don't know that there is a general rule of thumb about how different type color needs to be from background color. The approach I use is: It must be readable. So far no problems with that approach.

[djgreg]

Beachboy:
Definitly Google uses an algorhythm to detect hidden text!
Saw it on my own sites. I had a very tricky system of placing hidden text in ym websites but Google detected it. Don't ask me how they managed but my site got penalized.

[WebGuerrilla]

Just because you used hidden text and you got penalized doesn't mean it was an automated process that did it.

Hidden text penalties are manual.

[pageoneresults]

> Hidden text penalties are manual.

I'm in 100% agreement with WG on this one. Too many websites out there that use same text color as page background color. Anytime you do reverse headings and have your text set to white and your page backgrounds set to white, you've just produced a hidden text combination.

I doubt very seriously that this would ever become a part of any SE's filter as there are millions of websites that would end up penalized not even knowing what the heck was going on.

Strictly a manual review and usually reported by someone to the SE's.

[WebManager]

WebGuerrilla/Beachboy,

I agree, it has to be manual, because I have seen so many sites well ranked by Google by using this simple trick.

Tough for honest WebMasters, and a difficult issue for the Robot - precisely because of the earlier question:

What hues are acceptable on top of others?

Seems to me though, that color text on an identical color background isn't going to be squinted at by anyone - they can't see it at all!

I'm surprised at djgreg's frank admission. Does he belong on WebmasterWorld?

<my edit> I've just visited his Website - it is a snarl at Google for PR0-ing him - what a surprise! <end my edit>

[pageoneresults]

> I had a very tricky system of placing hidden text in ym websites but Google detected it. Don't ask me how they managed but my site got penalized.

djgreg, I'm 99% certain that someone probably sent in a spam report on you. It was a manual penalty, not automated.

WebManager, people admit things here everyday not realizing what they may be doing. If djgreg doesn't list a URL in his profile, then he can admit anything he wants. ;)

[lazyz]

pageoneresults - so a good example would be if a person has a back ground image, maybe a dark picture or something, so they set the text to white but the back ground color is also set to white... ooops, mistake but yet text is still visible.

[Syren_Song]

Hi tesla.

You may want to try using ColorSchemer [colorschemer.com]. It creates a set of web-safe colors for your site/graphic based on whatever base color you select. It should give you some choices that will have sufficient contrast for users to easily read the text on your site.

It's a really nifty bit of programming, but I've never gotten it to work in any version of Netscape, so make sure you're using IE to view it. ;)

[WebManager]

Hi Pageoneresults,

but he did submit a URL, and I visited it a few moments ago! It was a snarl about PR0!

[pageoneresults]

I visited it too. It was pretty amusing. I think you just need to be very careful about what you discuss in public at any forum. I know from experience that it can come back to bite you! And hard too!

[rfgdxm1]

>I visited it too. It was pretty amusing. I think you just need to be very careful about what you discuss in public at any forum. I know from experience that it can come back to bite you! And hard too!

ROFL. Yeah, with Googleguy reading around here, I wouldn't recommend putting your site in your profile, or posting anything here that could be used to find your site, unless your site is squeaky clean in terms of things like hidden text. That sort of abuse is easy to spot if anyone actually looks for it.

[snowfox121]

I think some of us (probably a lot, but only a few admit it) will push the edges of acceptability in order to better our SERPs. Otherwise what the heck is a SEO doing with his/her time? After reading in this forum for a week, i would have a very good idea of what is "squeaky clean" and what isn't. You don't need a SEO to produce a squeaky clean site. You just need someone who can read for a few days, understand basics, recognize good content and has the persistence to procure lots of great links. Big deal. On some of my pages i unnecessarily include key words where i could do without them. i make the keywords a faint color compared to the background, because to make them the regular color would ruin the design aesthetically. Let's just say my page is tited "News Source," and i'm optimizing my page for this term.

I list the links:
CNN News Source
BBC News Source
NBC News Source

and so on, down the page. The "News Source" is in faint text, perfectly visible, but because it's faint it is unobtrusive.

I am quite sure that there are lots of people who would accuse me of spamming the search engine. All i am doing is trying to do the job i am paid to do without breaking any SE rules and without making the page ugly for my employer or his visitors.

The discussion in this spamming debate often seems to be about how to bake the very best cake in the world using exactly the same ingredients, method and equipment as all the other bakers in the world. The cakes are all going to taste very much the same.

No one is going to win any prizes (SERPs) for that.

[pageoneresults]

> how to bake the very best cake in the world using exactly the same ingredients, method and equipment as all the other bakers in the world.

Ah-ha, but that is where the differences are! Its a matter of mixing the ingredients properly and knowing how to get the most out of your equipment. ;)

[snowfox121]

LOL

I should know better than to use an analogy. Let me put it this way: given the circumstances everyone will be getting pound cake, differing only slightly in quality.

I prefer a world where there's also some upside-down cake and black forest.

Then if the kitchen (google) says, "No more chocolate allowed," we know that we better stop using chocolate or it will cost us.

What many advocates in THIS forum are saying is that we should all agree make a gentlemen's agreement to stick to pound cake. Then we can heap scorn on all those who attempt other (perfectly legitimate) ingredients, and tell them they are spammers.

All this cake talk is making me hungry.