Comments and run on keywords.

[Brett_Tabke]

Someone asked me a simple question, that stumped me. A seemingly simple proposition that I should know the answer too. I've never done much comment testing since the days of spamming comments to infoseek in 97:

k<!-- -->e<!-- -->y<!-- -->w<!-- -->o<!-- -->r<!-- -->d

Will search engines see that as "keyword"?

[TallTroll]

Wouldnt the comment tags act as delimiters?
Do any spiders take notice of the contents of a comment tag? If so, then clearly, they wont see "keyword", but any that dont see comments might, I suppose. Why would you want to do that though? I cant think of any really useful application (other than "because you can")

[joshie76]

Can't be bothered to try it with real SE's but, for interest, our MS Index Server didn't find the *hidden* word.

[Brett_Tabke]

In the past Lycos and Infoseek would read comment tags. It used to be one of the slick tricks till everyone caught onto it. (I think it was Bruce Clay who first used it way back when). I'm not aware of any of them still reading them.

>would you want to do that though?

To break up words you don't want a search engine to see but still readable in a browser. Such as l<!-- -->i<!-- -->n<!-- -->k<!-- -->s

[TallTroll]

>To break up words you don't want a search engine to see but still readable in a browser. Such as l<!-- -->i<!-- -->n<!-- -->k<!-- -->s

Point taken