I've never seen this trick before - penalty bait?

[DXL]

I was looking at a site developed by one of the biggest designers of websites within a particular industry, when I noticed something peculiar. I right clicked on this site's logo just to take a peek at their alt image tags, and realized there were none (this design company's sites all rank exceptionally well). I then used my mouse wheel to scroll down the page, when suddenly just the logo scrolled and the rest of the page didn't.

Turns out, there's an H1 tag using their target keywords directly under the logo, followed by another logo. No borders, no scroll bar, you'd never know that there was a keyword rich H1 tag within that part of the header unless you accidentally did what I did. Without right clicking on the logo in Mozilla, its impossible to find that text (couldn't do it in my version of I.E., and couldn't bring it up in Mozilla without right clicking on the logo first).

I do a backlink check of the design company, and realize almost every site they've ever done (hundreds of them) uses this technique, some of which also have illegible dark keyword text on a dark background. Its one thing to have an inline frame with a scroll bar: but finding this text was a complete fluke on my part. Wouldn't this be considered hidden text?

[trillianjedi]

Wouldn't this be considered hidden text?

Yes, but the tool that detects that wouldn't get run over these sites until someone puts it in the "queue"...

TJ

[SuzyUK]

>>Wouldn't this be considered hidden text?
It might be abused that way, but it might not be, it could be an accessibility feature, where the image is replaced by the text if a user has images turned off - it sounds a bit like an image replacement technique to me.

As far as "Exposing" it, the standard SE hand check likely involves looking at pages with images and CSS turned off and this would show up straight away, So a hand check would be required to determine if the "hidden" text is spam or a user aid.

[soapystar]

even if detected if it has enough trust it wont harm it anyway. Its the new two teir system. Massivley high threshold for spam and cheating for trusted sites and a very low threshold for whitehat seo on non-trusted sites.

[trillianjedi]

Massivley high threshold for spam and cheating for trusted sites

I can concur with that, although I would be surprised if there wasn't a point (eg H1 a-tag keyword stuffing as seems to be the case here) where some form of filter takes effect, even on a highly trusted site.

TJ

[DXL]

It might be abused that way, but it might not be, it could be an accessibility feature, where the image is replaced by the text if a user has images turned off - it sounds a bit like an image replacement technique to me.

I'd be more likely to see it that way were it not for the fact that the text just so happens to be a keyword-stuffed H1 tag.

[caveman]

soapystar I think it's more of a graduated scale than a two tier system. ;-) Excluding manual intervention of course.

Some of the most fun we're having right now is trying to keep a handful of sites right on the cusp. Darned things bounce around like yo-yo's. :P