Hidden link mistake

[Northstar]

I just found a blank tag <a href="http://www.example.com"></a> in my site that must have been produced by my page editor some how. This empty tag was on all my pages because the page are produced dynamically. Could Google have been seeing this as a hidden link and penalize me for it? I just stumbled on it after doing a search with a Lynx Viewer to see what Google bot sees on my site. It was showing there as a hidden link.

[tedster]

That kind of thing can hurt your rankings - especially if it's not a link that duplicates a visible link href elsewhere on the page. Good that you found it - time to get rid of it.

[Northstar]

Well one of them was a duplicate of another visible link on the same page and it was a internal link. The other was to a external site but it was also just a duplicate of another visible link on the same page. Could this cause a penalty or drop in rank?

[tedster]

A hidden link to an external site can definitely cause ranking problems.

[robzilla]

A hidden link to an external site can definitely cause ranking problems.

What constitutes a hidden link? Would that that also include any links you have between <!-- --> comment tags? Could that be seen as deceptive? I have a site that, strangely enough, actually has a 'use' for links between comment tags (it's a CMS thing). I would think anything between comment tags would be ignored by search engines, but is that really so? After all, they have been abused in the past. It doesn't seem to have hurt the ranking of my pages so far, as far as I can tell, but I can't help but wonder if I would be better off without them.

[Robert Charlton]

What constitutes a hidden link?

A hidden link is a link that bots will follow but doesn't show up visually on the page. It's an intentionally deceptive link. I've vetoed code that contained blank links as a spiderable alternative to Flash links... feeling that these could be regarded as spam and hurt the site.

A <noscript> link is not a hidden link unless it's being used deceptively.

I would think anything between comment tags would be ignored by search engines, but is that really so?

I've tested this a million times (a half-million anyway... just a million discussions. ;) ). Using nonsense words and unique text strings, I've never seen any evidence that search engines pay attention to text enclosed in comment tags.

That said, if you've got some keyword-stuffed comment tags on your page, this will probably be seen in a hand check as suggestion of intent (along with cluelessness) and might therefore hurt you.

[Northstar]

Would it be a good idea to submit a reinclusion request now that I have found these two hidden links and removed them? Or should I just wait and see if traffic returns? I'm not sure if this was indeed the problem that cause the 70% drop in google traffic but it is the only true lead I have found so far.

[Northstar]

So what about a hidden or blank link to a internal page that was spread over hundreds of pages. Would this also cause a problem with google?

[Robert Charlton]

So what about a hidden or blank link to a internal page that was spread over hundreds of pages. Would this also cause a problem with google?

Considering it was a dupe of a link already visible on your page, you never know. In a hand check, they may only see the hidden link and not notice the other... or they may have tools that would make both links glow in the dark and there'd be no chance for error.

I'd suggest you fix it asap and throw yourself at their mercy.... explain how it happened to be there, etc... but I would not rest at that point and assume you've diagnosed the reason for your ranking drop.

[Northstar]

Would just removing them fix the problem or should I try a reinclusion request?

[Quadrille]

Only do a reinclusion request if

(a) you are sure you have been excluded
(b) you are pretty confident you've identified the problem.

Reinclusion requests demand (expensive) human resources from a company that prides itself on working via the algo; it's not something to request unless you are sure ... in case you need it another time.

[efendi]

Hi,
additional to this questin: is this a similar problem:
<body>
<a name="top"></a>

can this hurt the ranking too?

greatings

[Quadrille]

No, it's an 'internal affair', no effect.

[pageoneresults]

I would think an empty element like that would be treated as such, an empty element. I've seen this happen with various WYSIWYG editors. It all has to do with where you position your cursor and the types of edits you make to links. I've seen FrontPage leave empty hrefs if you don't push the proper button sequence and don't have your elements highlighted correctly when creating links or removing links. One of the best features in FP is the

Ctrl + /

function which reveals all tags in Normal View. This will show you those empty elements.

I would think anything between comment tags would be ignored by search engines, but is that really so?

HTML Comments are treated as markup.