Hidden links in plain site?

[Powdork]

On my directory some of the clients want me to track their visits from my site for them. Of course, they also want the benefit of the link with the search engines. I'm thinking I can put two links to the exact same page from my page. The one (very obvious to the viewer) link would be a trackable js type thingy that passes on no pr. Additionally, there would be a standard html link in the content of the page but this link would be hidden (made to look like regular text) in order to keep people from clicking on it.
I doubt anyone would report this but if it happened would it stand up to human review?

[rfgdxm1]

Sounds like playing with fire to me.

[Powdork]

But why, I'm not trying to gain an advantage nor am I trying to manipulate page rank. As long as the page linked to by the js is the exact same page as the html link. There is no hidden text. Only the fact that the text is a link is hidden.
Also, I'm not sure if anyone would catch on. When doing a backlink check the page would show up. If anyone went to see if the link is on the site they would get to the page and see a big fat link to the page. If anyone hits control A while viewing the page they would find nothing out of the ordinary. If someone uses a text browser or an older browser they would just see both links (if they would even see the js one). I'm not trying to fool Google, just trying to make sure pr is passed on and users click on the trackable link.
However, I can still be convinced otherwise.

[mrguy]

If you were my competitor, I don't think I would really care about your intent for hiding the link especially if you were placing higher than me in the SERPs. I would think your placing higher because of it.

My job is to get as high a ranking as I can without violating Googles TOS. If I see a competitor is higher than me with a clean site, so be it. I just have to try harder.

If however I see a competitor is cheating or doing something that is plainly spelled out as being bad, no matter what the reason is, I'll turn them in.

I regulary check my competitors sites and analyze them to make sure they are playing fair. I have found several that are not and some have met Google doom thanks to me.

You need to ask yourself if the market your in is competitive enough that if your competition sees your hidden link, will they turn you in. If the answer is yes, I wouldn't do it.

[Powdork]

If however I see a competitor is cheating or doing something that is plainly spelled out as being bad, no matter what the reason is, I'll turn them in.

Where exactly is this spelled out? It's not hidden links. An image doesn't let you know its a link unless you hover over it and the cursor changes. I probably wouldn't get rid of that although I would block the underline.

[born2drv]

Ask yourself this, would you turn yourself in? Of course you would. If you really want to pass on PR to this guy, make a links page from that page that is very un-noticeable. It will problaby be PR-1 of what the main page is, but he'll be the only one on there too, so I'm sure it will still benefit him.

Or you could place this code above your "hidden-link cheater code":

<!--Dear Google employee, I'm not trying to cheat, honest! I'm just trying to pass on PR from the big link above that is tracking visitors -->

... that might work, don't quote me on that, I've never tried it. :)

[rfgdxm1]

mrguy is right. We are talking hear about the dirty, cut throat business of Internet marketing. Likely a non-commercial site could get away with this because nobody would complain. However, expect competitors when you are a commercial site to want to have them meet Google doom.

[Powdork]

I truly don't believe it is cheating. Picture this.

Widgety widgets for sale [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com]- Only here can you find the best widgety widgets for sale.

The italicized stuff would not be italicized. You could only tell its a link if you hover over it. But..
I'm starting to be convinced.

What if I put the links to vendors (there are only ever three per page) at the bottom of the page with a note to the effect of. If javascript is disabled in your browser you may not see the outgoing links from this page. Here they are.

Widgety widgets for sale [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com]

Mods-The url listed here to get the underline effect does not exist

[daroz]

Is there a way to achive this using a JavaScript action?

(I hate JS personally, so excuse my ignorance)

Something like:

A HREF="(URL HERE)" ONCLICK="(JS to Track and Redirect)"

IIRC GoogleBot will follow the HREF and ignore the ONCLICK JS stuff, I might be wrong but it's a thought. Also, as long as both the HREF and the JS send you to the SAME untimate page I would not consider this cheating at all, and I don't think Google would either. (Just to be safe the JS code probibly should include the destination URL somewhere so it's obvious where it's going).

... just a thought.

[born2drv]

Powdork, I wasn't implying you were a cheater, I guess it's all relative. If you're a competitor then it's cheating, if not then who cares. Explaining it to me seems rational and understandable (unless you're my competitor) ;)

Me personally, I wouldn't do it.. too much to lose. The thing you mentioned about the non-js viewable links seems more logical but it's still a violation of the Google's TOS right? So I still wouldn't do it especially if this is a major money-maker for you.

[rfgdxm1]

>Explaining it to me seems rational and understandable (unless you're my competitor) ;)

And when it comes to a competitor, all efforts must be taken to destroy them. This is the WWW, where it is kill or be killed.

[Brett_Tabke]

Links the same color as the rest of the text is rampant on the web today. There are also differences in browsers that can cause link display problems.

It's one reason I use Opera. Just one press of control-G and goodbye hidden links, goodbye invisible text, and hello real page in all it's glory.

[Powdork]

That wouldn't bother me at all because I'm not too worried about what happens then. The number of people that use Opera is not even remotely statistically significant to matter when tracking my links and I still think it would stand up to the human review. All the same, I think the conservative route may be the best here. I guess the 'web according to Google' rules yet again.
By the way Brett, these links would be on anything but a plain site. :)

[tedster]

Let's not get too confused here. If you're talking about the links being rendered as plainly visible text -- and there's a cursor change on mouseover but just no underline, then you are absolutely not doing anything that Google has prohibited.

Only if those links cannot be seen or read after a normal page rendering have you crossed the line.

[Powdork]

Tedster,
Exactly, this is the external css file
.links{ FONT-SIZE: 13px; COLOR: #00FF00; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Helvetica; font-style: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none; font-weight: 600; line-height: 19pt} A:hover{ COLOR: #00FF00; TEXT-DECORATION: none }

And the code for the content would be
<span class="links">Really, really <a href="http://www.samepageasjslink.com">relevant stuff here</a></span>

[tedster]

Looks legitimate to me.

As an aside, you'll do better putting class="links" inside the anchor tag, rather than trying to surround it with a <span>.

When the Anchor tag occurs within the span tag, the rules for a: are further "down the cascade." So the anchor tag rules should override the span tag rules you have set. Changing the class of the ANCHOR is the surest way to go.

[Brett_Tabke]

Ok, I thought you meant that it was rendered just the same as the rest of the text on the page. Say for example, one of the words in these two sentences were a link.

[marcs]

Instead of using two links, why not use one regular text link?

To tell your client how many hits they received from your site, check their logs. No need to do anything which may be considered risky. This obviously assumes you have access to their logs.

[jomaxx]

Powdork, you say you're not trying to manipulate page rank, but that's exactly what you ARE trying to do. You would be showing Googlebot a link that humans will not recognize as such, in order to artificially pass PR to another page - although in the scenario you've described, you can rationalize it as "good" cloaking because your intentions are pure. I am not predicting you'll get a penalty, but it clearly goes against the spirit of Google's guidelines.

I say just make a regular text link and stick it at the bottom of the page. Few people will see it, not one person in 10,000 will click on it, and no trickery required.

[Powdork]

Tedster,
If I put the class="links" inside the <a href tag then the rest of the text would be a different class text and therefore make the link very visible, would it not?

Brett,
that is exactly what I'm talking about. In your post, "two sentences" (without ") would be a link off my site. The difference would be that directly above the sentence would be a trackable link to the exact same page. This link would be as visible as the html link is invisible because I want the user to use this link only.

marcs,
No, I do have access to several of the vendors' logs but not to the ones asking for the tracking.

[Powdork]

Could the answer to my question be here [webmasterworld.com]?
I'm off to learn something new. Thanks WW. :)

[jdancing]

I am using a ASP based product that tracks the number of clicks on each link.

The typical link looks like:
http://www.mysite.com/cgi-bin/linktrack.asp?ID=55

This redirects the user to an ASP page that stores the real link to send the visitor. It then enters the click into a database for daily click reporting options.

So am I not passing PR to any of the web sites with links on my site? If not, what is a good way to pass PR plus be able to track what links are getting clicks?

[freejung]

I don't remember anybody saying that your links have to look different from the rest of your text. It's obviously good usability in most cases, since you want the user to know that it's a link, but in this case you don't.

It may sound shady, but I think it's legit. Google says that you can't hide your links, but they never said that they have to be clearly identified as links, just that they can't be hidden. As Brett says, this is rampant, they would have to penalize a lot of people if this was a no-no.

Look at it this way, you are trying to get around a limitation of Google, which is that they can't follow JS. This is not your fault, it's their limitation (if indeed this is the case, isn't there some speculation that they may have acquired this ability now?). I don't think you're doing anything deceptive, you just want Google to follow a link that you in fact have, and track click-throughs at the same time.

Having said that, surely there's some sort of technical fix for this, some other way to track click-throughs that doesn't involve hiding the link from Google, isn't there? I don't know one myself, but surely somebody around here does...

[jady]

If the link is "visible" text - whether or not is is a billboard or not, you are not violating any TOS for Google. Many of our words on our site are hyperlinked to other pages but not made billboards - just for folks to follow for more information on a certain word.

Dont worry about it! Also, if someone DOES report you - even if you ARE violating TOS (which you apparently would not be) the chances of action being taken are slim. We have been reporting a competitor for using HIDDEN text (white on white) for months and nothing has even been done..

[TheDave]

What about a <noscript> tag? Could that work in there somewhere? That's what google says you should use.

[Powdork]

What about a <noscript> tag? Could that work in there somewhere? That's what google says you should use.

Is that used the same as the <noframes> tag? That would be way too easy. There must be some other way.;)
I'll look into it.

[Powdork]

To heck with conservative. I've gone ahead with the original plan. Just so I'm clear on this, to track the link I just create an external js file that does the linking and track the GET's for that file?
I'll let you konow (loudly) if it ever causes a problem. The only concern I could imagine Google having would be that if abused, this method could make a mockery of anchor text. In this case the anchor text for the html link is the same as the anchor text for the js link.

[TeofenGL]

A HREF="(URL HERE)" ONCLICK="(JS to Track and Redirect)"

daroz, this will work very nicely - except the onClick needs to return false, like this -

a href="http://www.site.com" onclick="trackJS('site'); return false;"

- if you don't return false on the onClick, both actions will fire when JS is enabled, and that would be annoying.

this has the added benefit of working seamlessly as the intended link for non-js/js-off users - i've done this (with target="_blank") on a number of sites where people wanted a popup, but the funcionality in the popup was too crucial for me to leave it to js only.

also, it's not a "hidden link" at all, it's just a way of providing the basic functionality of the link to non-js users (among them googlebot)

it seems kinda pointless of whichever site that is trying to handle the tracking to use JS when there are many better ways.