Forum Moderators: open
<example>
<style> .xyz { display: none; } </style>
<a href="http://www.xyz.com" class="xyz">Xyz link for bots only</a>
</example>
does using an external css file prevent this better in terms of stopping google flagging this as an attempt to hide text.
if it doesnt pick it up now, it will soon.
The question was if putting your code in a seperate CSS file would make it less obvious.
Well, does googlebot look at external CSS files? I havn't seen googlebot request an external css file, so without accessing the file, it can't tell if it's hidden or not. Sure there is still the human touch, but not on 3 billion web pages... And if googlebot does start requesting your css file, you could always put it in a directory that is disallowed in robots.txt.
( note, I don't think this is a good idea, and I don't practice it, just trying to answer the question )
Edit: Actually, I do use display:none, but for ligit reasons, e.g.
<span style="display:none">Your browser doesn't seem to support CSS. Please upgrade to Mozilla</span>
[edited by: eaden at 2:55 am (utc) on May 21, 2003]
You should be safe as long as your site gets lousy results. At least to start with they will only be using it to help process spam reports. If you do not rank well enough for anyone to care, then you should be safe.
this is not about hiding content, rather than hiding external/internal links so that users will not click these hidden links, apart form this being unethical, i was just asking can google pick up and penalize this?
>>eaden
it has been mentioned on this forum, that disallowing access to a css file could be flagged by google, so doing that technique could penalize your domain,
So the spam reports will be reviewed by humans who manually check these pages and then act if it is found that the page in question is using a spam technique?
display:none;
visibility:hidden;
left:-800px;top:-800px;
With CSS becoming more mainstream, the abuse is sure to follow. It is out there now, but not even close to becoming a problem.
As smart as Googlebot is, and other spiders, detecting funny stuff in css should be fairly simple. All good things usually end up being abused over time.
Penalty for abusing css...
Permanent ban with no chance of reinclusion!
[edited by: pageoneresults at 3:08 am (utc) on May 21, 2003]
Whats stopping Google from counting this as hidden text and banning the site?
Nothing.
Whats stopping Google from counting this as hidden text and banning the site?
There are a bunch of legitimate uses for display:none - it was not specifically designed for spamming. For example until recently Zeldman had a collection of links that were in a hidden div - to browse the links you clicked a "show" link. While I don't think this is very good interface design, the intention certianly wasn't spam.
I think the best policy for Google would be to simply ignore anything thats hidden - rather than banning sites (unless reviewed by a human). As far as I can see this equates to javascript drop down navigation - its not spam but its not followed. If you want GoogleBot to follow links - then provide some atlernative navigation.
On the topic of robots.txt blocking access to external css - if the css is linked from a page that is not blocked by robots.txt, then the css must be considered as part of the page and downloaded regardless.
Your browser doesn't seem to support CSS. Please upgrade to Mozilla.
I would say the part between the <span> tags. A bot could easily determine when certain css attributes are being used accordingly.
Now, if the bot encountered a <span display:none;> tag, it would then perform an analysis on the content between the <span> tags. How it would determine whether or not it was viable content is beyond me. But, with technology where it is today, these offenses have to be easy to detect.
