Penalization question for display:none

[asantos]

Does google penalize my www.abc.com domain if i insert this into my www.xyz.com domain?

#c {
display:none;
}

<div id="c"><a href="http://www.abc.com" title="ABC">ABC</a></div>

It must be hidden because it screws up the GUI.

[jakegotmail]

so your hiding the link?

one link maybe not....

a bunch... your asking for trouble

[asantos]

its only one. the thing is, ABC is xyz.com developer, so my boss is asking me to insert a hidden link for SEO purposes.

[LifeinAsia]

Most of the time, all you have to do is ask yourself this simple question: "Am I doing this to benefit users or solely for the SEO benefit?"

Your answer will give you an idea of how favorably or unfavorbly Google will look upon it.

[g1smd]

>> hidden link for SEO purposes <<

Bang!

You're dead.

[asantos]

Good points. Just one more question. Who gets punished at the end?

a) XYZ.com (website that links to the other)
b) ABC.com (linked website)

If answer is b) i could easily link any website with a hidden link and it would get punished... that has no sense.

[jtara]

If it's hidden, why would an SE even pick it up, though?

(OK, I see you are hiding it with styles. Do you think that SEs will continue to ignore hiding with styles if they are gamed in this fashion?)

I see nothing wrong with adding an attribution to a website indicating who developed it. Is there some reason that the client doesn't want a visible link?

If they DON'T want a visible link - are they aware of - and do they approve of - the hidden one?

If it is approved by the client, and they don't want a visible link, I would certainly make it clear just what the link is:

<a href="http://www.abc.com" title="ABC Company, developer of this web site">

I dunno the SEO implication, but it seems to me it's always better to be clear and honest.

And do be aware that this link WILL be visible by users who have style sheets turned off, are using a text-only browser (such as Lynx), etc.

[asantos]

They are ok with inserting the hidden link. The only reason they dont want the link to be visible is because it screws up the gui.

I dont think search engines will ignore css-hidden links, because its not a farmlink, its just one little link.

My boss wouldnt normally be obsessed with this one, but the XYZ.com website has pagerank 5, which could be very positive for our abc.com company.

[trinorthlighting]

A hidden link can still be viewed by spiders even though its not veiwable to a person. Spiders read code. I bet google has already though of that trick and will more than likely penalize you....

Google might penalize both and they more than likely will not even count the link for pr purposes.

[asantos]

I hope Google wont check that stuff. In my case i do this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="some.css" />

Inside some.css i have
@import url("misc.css");

Inside misc.css i have
#c { display: none; }

And in the page i have the link like this
<div id="c"><a href="http://www.abc.com" title="ABC">ABC</a></div>

[edited by: asantos at 2:05 am (utc) on Aug. 31, 2006]

[asantos]

Another technique could be
<div id="c"><a href="http://www.abc.com" title="ABC">ABC</a></div>

And then do this with javascript:
getElementById("c").style.display="none";

I dont think SE spiders will check javascript code as well.

[trinorthlighting]

Code is code, if a browser can read it so can googlebot.

[norton j radstock]

Why on earth don't you simply make it a visible link and describe the service provided by your web designer? Works better and no risk.

[asantos]

They dont want to screw the website's GUI, so i cant add a visible link. They told me i could add a hidden link for seo purposes.

[Bluesplinter]

Simple. Explain that by adding a hidden link you are taking a risk (it IS a risk), and leave the call to them. If the site is penalized, it's on their heads (if the bosses are Pointy Haired, get it in writing).

If YOU make the call, and the site gets a penalty... well, that would depend on how forgiving the bosses are ;)

[asantos]

Ok, what if i dont hide it, but instead, i just do this:

<div><a href="http://abc.com" title="ABC"></a></div>

... No info in between the a href tags...

[g1smd]

You really are trying very hard looking for a way to fool search engines aren't you?

Google specifically looks for people that are trying to do that; and calls them spammers.

Just dump the tricks.

[tedster]

my boss is asking me to insert a hidden link for SEO purposes

Have your boss do some risk assessment by reading Google's Webmaster Guidelines [google.com] and notice what they chose to list as their FIRST guideline:

Quality guidelines - specific guidelines

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

The kind of things you mention may go undetected for a while (they can be challenging to detect in an automated fashion) or they may come into play quickly. I certainly have heard of boatloads of sites that got into trouble with Google by hiding links.

Consider this: the algo could flag certain techniques for a human to inspect. These approaches to hiding links certainly won't pass a "hand inspection", and the result can be a banned domain. That's a big risk to take just for not "screwing up the GUI".

[goubarev]

Yeah, guys are right, you'll be taking a risk by creating an "invisible" div...

But, on another hand, I doubt google bot paraises Javascript - so if you write your <div> with that - google wouldn't even know that you have it... of course, with a human inspection, there is almost no escape...

Consider this: On one of my sites, I have a Javascript side menu - that is in the div - partially hidden on the left side of the screen (yes, it does have links and keywords). Visitor mouses over the tab and the whole menu slides to the middle of the screen. That's totally valid reason to have hidden layer with text and links - to the benefit of my users.

Google, of course, has it's own opinion - check out Matt Cutts post about that - he got screemed at by half of the Internet, just for suggesting that there might be some "penalty" for hidden <div> ... BTW, as far as I know, he never addressed that issue after - probably scared to even go there...

[pageoneresults]

Unfortunately this is not something the search engines are smart enough to detect just yet, or at least that has been my observation. I think it would be somewhat simple to detect, but I think the resources required might be a bit on the "intensive" side.

Its not the bots you need to worry about. Its the competition. Someone is sure to find and report it to Google at which time action may or may not be taken.

People use display:none and display:hidden for all sorts of things. Letting an algo determine a penalty for their use would not work. Or would it?

[goubarev]

Yep,
The issue is not if one has a hidden <div> or not
The issue is if one has "bad" stuff in that hidden <div> or not

Defining the "bad" stuff is what everybody have a problem with...

In my example the <div> is hidden behind the <javascript> which google can't parase. It could read it, but it doesn't know what it means... --- so it doesn't even know that I've created the <div>, much less that it's hidden --- and there is a kazzillion ways to make it even more difficult to read - I could create an HMTL element and then write a javascript function to document.write it, and then encode the whole thing... yeah, good luck figuring out what was there...

But, yeah, if one of your competitors reports it and then you get manually kicked out of google... it would be hard to get back in...

[asantos]

Ive read all your points. As a brief i can say:
* Googlebot CAN be fooled.
* Manual revisions, cannot.
* Google does perform manual revisions in reported sites.
* If you hide your links, you'll probably get reported by someone.
* If you get busted, you get banned.

...at last, i think is better to go the right way.