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I'd examine your assumptions - why should a part of the site with "important content" be "hard to get to"? Google wants to see what human visitors see, not stuff that isn't fit for human consumption.
It's hard to say what Google can and can't detect automatically, but hidden links are a no-no. If the content is important, put a text link in, even if you put it someplace that isn't too obvious to the casual human visitor. The anchor text will help your rankings, and you'll be able to sleep at night.
What I'm wondering is when does this become a dubious practice?
Whenever the links are hidden or invisible.
I second what rogerd says. Additionally, if you look at Google's algo (or most any other search engine algo), it favors content that is featured prominently on the page, as well as content that has the "vote" of anchor text in a link from another page.
Anchor text is considered to be a strong representation of what the page receiving the link is about, because it's assumed that that's what human visitors choosing to go to the page will see. When you start hiding things, the engine considers your representation of the content at best irrelevant, and, at worst, deceptive and deserving of a penalty.
Sounds like spam to me!
Jordan
If you check around, you will find a lot of SEO's that have been penalized over hidden links. Some SEO's have been scared to implement dynamic menus for fear that they will be banned. So far, it appears that GG can distinguish between dynamic menus and "hidden links".
Ahhh, no doubt about that. Sorry for the confusion. I just read the first post more carefully, about the "." thing and all. If the links are hidden just for the sake of being hidden, and are never exposed to the user, then judging from everything I've read around here, they'll be considered spam and the SEs will definitely frown on it.
Jordan
Just have a discreet link in the footer at the bottom of the search page, for example:
Copyright (c) 2003 Us ¦ About ¦ Contact ¦ Search Index
Nobody will ever click on "Search Index", but if they do; so what - don't worry about it.
On the "Search Index" page, use letters to split the index down into manageable chunks (you don't really want more than 50-80 links on any one page), and use URL re-writing if necessary to make the pages spider-friendly; for example:
www.example.com/si/A/index.html
www.example.com/si/B/index.html
This is what I do for some of my clients!
Problem solved.
