Same colour text and background

[omega1]

Hi,

ive heard that if you use same colour text and background, you could be banned from search engines (or just not included) is this true?

if it is true, could one use a slightly different font colour that will still be unnoticeable?

Please advise,

thanks

[Nermin]

hi omega1

welcome to webmaster world. i am sure tat if you use same text and background color you will be banned. as for using simmilar i am not sure. question is why would you use at all :). there is other way of getting into the seearch engines.

happy new year

[omega1]

thanks for replying, i am already on search engines, with a very high and satisfactory ranking (even though i have keywords in small font and same colour as background), i think i will remove them now that i am ranked, just in case i get banned!

thanks again for your reply, and happy new year to you all

[John_Caius]

[webmasterworld.com...]

If you've got satisfactory rankings then why risk them by using underhand techniques?

[humpo]

Read a few previous threads but they go off topic so much i haven’t seen an answer

Would the following be flagged as hidden text?
Body background is white. Text is white, in a div with an image as the background.

eg.
css
.menu{background-image:url(img/menu.gif);color:#fff}
<div class="menu">Contact</div>

OK as it is? Or should i just pick another colour for the text, or would setting the background colour of the DIV help?

cheers

[Arianna]

humpo: I don't know about se banning, but I'd put a non-white bg-color on that div either way, just to make the text visible if the gif needs time to load or in case someone is browsing with images turned off

[omega1]

BUT....

How about a slightly different colour? One that cant be noticed? Will they pick up on that?

[toolkit]

Possibly not but your competitors most likely will

[warmwind]

Why would you want to do this anyway? What's the purpose, if it's not for cheating?

[nevetS]

IMO it's just asking for a competitor to issue a spam report to the search engine.

As soon as somebody gets jealous of your ranking it'll be one of the first things they do.

[Gert_Jan]

Yes they will definetly do that. And then you are in bigger trouble because you will be banned (forever) on SE's .

[xbase234]

Be careful with the types of techniques you are considering. As other members have mentioned, slightly off-color text may flag a spam report and get your site banned from the indexes.

I wouldn't do it -

[conroy]

Ah the irony.

One set of posts proclaims how Google does nothing with the spam reports, while this one...

<sarcasm>

This thread says you are going to be visited personally by Google at your home and they will take your website and crush it into oblivion if a competitor even hints to Google that you are using somewhat hidden text. Obviously Google sits around at their computers all day check up on the 100000s of complaints they receive about other websites! That is what 90% of the employed people do, didn't you know that?
</sarcasm>

Unless you are using identical text and background colors that is easily identified by a bot, you will not be banned. If you use CSS etc. then it is no problem. Competitors can complain all they want.

Is it ethical? No.

Is it necessary? No.

Will using identical background and text colors get you banned? Yes it can quite easily if you do it wrong.

Will using identical background and text colors get you banned if you do it correctly? No.

Will using similar colors get you banned? 99.999% No.

[xbase234]

In case anyone is confused, the next sentence is worth repeating: Using off-color text and backgrounds for the purpose of keyword stuffing is *not* a good idea if you are are seeking a sustainable SEO solution for your website.