bgcolor and Font Color Same

Text with many keywords but bgcolor & font color same.

[samuel_ado]

hi everybody,

i assume that "text (at bottom of the page) contains more than 250 words and bgcolor and font color (font-size: 1pt)same" is a reason to have a penalty and filter of google should take it out... but this site is still #1 and other site of same company which has same system is #2 since august/2003..

do i have to report them? or have to wait for "google - filter" will find them...

any comment?

thanks
ado_samuel

[ciml]

When pages with hidden text rank well, there will generally be other reasons for the high rankings. Google do filter for hidden text, but it's a complex subject and their methods will evolve.

The Google spam report helps Google identify types of 'spam'; but I wouldn't normally expect it to be a method of harming individual site owners.

[kaled]

The hidden/small text probably has little impact on the results. By all means report them. It is possible that sneaky cloaking is being used to fool Google's automatic filters.

Kaled.

[tbear]

Makes you wonder though.......

I see all the time sites appearing, and topping some serps, with lists of text keywords hidden behind <bgcolor>.

I mean basic stuff, working, for months............

Is it really so simple, or difficult¿¿

[Chris_R]

It is impossible to do correctly and fully. Google knows this, but installed one to keep WEBMASTERS from complaining about their competitors.

Even if they got rid of 99% of people using this method:

1) They will train people what doesn't work - and it will work next time (all you need is a gif the same color as your text - no search engine can detect that - there are a dozen other things you can do as well).

2) They will ban thousands of people by accident. The more they try to filter that are "abusing" visible text, then the more they will catch by accident. There are sites that hide info on purpose on their sites that can be highlighted (ip addresses and movie spoilers are one) as well as html color charts that are autogenerated more or less - and have black text on black background every 219 squares.

3) They waste time. Google spent all this time making a filter to make complaining webmasters happy. This has nothing to do with improving quality of search results. Google should have ignored the invisible text.

Nothing personal, but if a competitor is beating me using invisible text, I would be embarrased. Invisible text is so 1998. Might as well just be repeating metatags.

The main traffic that people can get with techniques like this - is "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 keyword4 keyword5" and they have lists and lists of them. They might as well make it visible.

Fact is the reason they are beating you probably has nothing to do with the text on the page. Throw enough stuff against the wall and some of it will stick. Have enough competitors throwing stuff, and some of them will beat you some of the time. If they throw 10 things against the way - and three stick - you still see all ten, but can't tell what stuff worked and what didn't.

You also don't see the 99% of people google stopped for throwing this or 50% they stopped for throwing that. Chances are some of the people throwing that made it in - and also have this, and that is what you see.

Question is - do you start throwing your own stuff (white or blackhat) or just sit and report those that are?

[jady]

I've reported a site twice now that uses 200 to 300 keywords at bottom of page with text same color as background (hidden). They do rank #2 for a very aggressive keyword/keywords. Waiting to see if its picked out as its very deceptive but so far no luck.