Competitors Tricks

They have DIV visabillty HIDDEN with lists of keyword

[Aberdeen]

I noticed my competitor had some strange descriptions for some keywords, when I looked into his code he was using a hidden DIV with a long list of keywords and locations. Is this just a clever version of Blue on Blue? is it doing him any good? If so why isnt everyone doing it? Google sees it as the words appear in the description.

I had never seen it before.

Cheers

[ukgimp]

classic method for spamming.

>>Is this just a clever version of Blue on Blue?

oh yeah. but as with b on b it is a dangerous approach if you wish for a long site life.

>>why isnt everyone doing it

same reason for blue on blue

[Aberdeen]

so if someone was to inform google of such a thing could that site get into trouble. I wont because i like competition, but the guy who used to run the site before me used blue on blue and kept disapearing from the google rankings till he got rid of the blue on blue.

[Stretch]

I recently (about a month or so ago) filed my first spam report to see what would happen. 3 sites in a particular SERP were spamming. 1 blue on blue, 1 hidden DIV and one with keywords in <noscript> tags.

Nothings changed so far. I imagine others here have different experiences but I get the impression G isn't too hot on acting on spam reports.

Stretch

[tedster]

Right - Google is much more interested in using the spam reports to generate a new part of their algorithm that will catch the kinds of spam that are reported.

Hand editing of the index might be done in the grossest of cases (@dult content delivered to children's keywords, or a huge domain farm that their current filtering misses) but as a general rule, they prefer to automate the process. Could take a few months, or...

[richardb]

...they prefer to automate the process. Could take a few months, or...

yes sadly there is little or no info on this one from the SE's who hide behind the vale of "we are using it to improve our...

...seems like they actually want everyone to go over to the dark side:)

so I guess we should all go to play safe "go to the grey side", where it's easy to appeal and no harm done.

Rich

[JamesR]

>is it doing him any good?

How is he ranking compared to you?

You should be able to work the same kind of keywords into your content visibly. I doubt this is helping him much unless they are 4 or more word phrases that are unique.