Hiddent Text Oh My

Hidden text that may not appear hidden to the SE spiders?

[shawn]

I was recently doing a search on google for my searh terms to make sure I am still ranking well etc. when I noticed a site that is not realted to my industry (<snip>) showing up in the top ten for this specific search pharse.

I thought "Gee thats odd" and clicked to look at the cached page. The main page consist of pic(flash) and the "ENTER" Button on a black background. So I thought "ok" if I highlight the page I can see it. Wrong!

So I download the page and open it up in notepad to see the source. They have inside this tag - <div id="name"> - about 20-30 links to their site (www.example.com/file.htm) that simply point back to their site (301 redirect maybe?).

The have also placed links to other sites thay have done in this tag.

The CSS for "name" is:

#name { position:absolute; left:-400px; top:-200px; width:400px; height:200px; z-index:1}

So this layer actaully sits in between the flash and the ENTER button and yuo cant tell there would be 20-40 links because it looks like a normal paragraph space!

My question is this - when Google indexed this page was this taken as regular text and not hidden text?

Shawn

[edited by: pageoneresults at 12:45 am (utc) on Aug. 6, 2003]
[edit reason] No Specifics Please [/edit]

[batdesign]

Google can't tell css hidden text from it's own elbow...

You can use display:none and merrily get away with murder so no need to use slightly surreptitious methods that shift divs around to a non-visible area.

[MonkeeSage]

I have divs (with child spans) that have a display: none; rule set on them until some onclick magic (click a heading and a few lines of descriptive text pops up underneath the heading until clicked/when clicked takes you to the corresponding anchor/hides itself/or timer hides itself if not clicked after x seconds).

Google shows the contents of the hidden divs in it's page description field for the page (positioned logically under their proper headings), so it evidentally can see them just fine. Don't ask me how or why, just thought it was interesting.

Jordan

[pageoneresults]

What would stop a spider from reading display:none? Also, what would stop a spider from indexing CSS and doing some basic calculations? Google has already been seen looking at CSS files in the past.

Any abuse taking place right now will eventually fade away as the filters are implemented to combat such issues. If someone wants to take that chance of being permanently removed from Google's index, that is their choice. I would think the spiders can easily be programmed to ignore anything contained in negative values and also display:none; so there would be no value assigned to those areas. And, all those fancy off the screen links would not be seen, bummer! ;)

[shawn]

I am just getting involved with SEO and had never seen this type of "trick".

As always this is the place to educated on such matters :)

[zoobie]

I just saw the exact same flash thing done...ranked #1. Can you report these violations and move up a notch in rankings?

[rogerd]

Hidden text is a reportable offense according to Google, zoobie.

[zoobie]

What's the address? Umm...how can we post addresses if addresses aren't allowed here? Lame...
Thanks

[shawn]

Just do a search for "reporting spam on google"

I have heard mixed results - some say google takes action other times it may take forever.

[dougmcc1]

I've heard that Google only uses spam reports to improve their filters.

[shawn]

I know of a another local webmaster here that reported a site that appears in the top 10 and has hiddent text - it has not been dropped our lost page rank. That was about 4-5 months ago when he reported it.

[nakulgoyal]

Browing through the Internet, I found a lot of websites with Hidden Text. Before reporting them to Google, I always email the webmaster and alert him that this is BAD and if somebody reports this to Google, you may be banned.

If the webmaster has a Brain, he usually corrects all the stuff at his own ..

I also include a link to the Hidden Text Forum link here in the forums that makes him feel I am not talking junk.

Wha do the other people say about this way? I feel webmasters should be given a chance... and repetitive spamming should be punished by being reported to Google.

[shawn]

Well I was just informed that the site I found this "trick" on has cleaned up the page.

Alright, which one of you knew the site and emailed them to clean it up ;)

Coincidence? Maybe...but I doubt it.

Shawn

[surfgatinho]

I put a posting up about a the very same topic in the Google News forum.
This page involves a style class .searchenginetext!
Is that cheeky or what?
Anyway there are some interesting responses and here's where to report spamming sites:
[google.com...]