Are transparent images okay?

[hdpt00]

With regards to SERPs, I use some transparent spacer gifs, all the same file with different width and height attributes depending on the space required.

Will using these transparent gifs in any way effect my rankings? I am not using them as link and as far as alt, should I just use alt="" or not even put an alt?

Thanks,
Brandon

[troels nybo nielsen]

Brandon, there are _many_ websites by some very competent webmasters that use transparent gifs for spacing. I doubt that they would do it if they found that those gifs hurt their rankings. But I could be wrong. I have not tried myself.

[asheldon]

why don't you get into CSS?

Although I agree that white spacers don't damage you, it's best to achieve a high text-to-code ratio. You can only do this with CSS and the position of txt and tables will remain exactely as you want.

good luck!