Wordtracker.com Hidden Text HTML
Why did Wordtracker.com, a Google PageRank PR7 website, use CSS to hide text such as: Primary navigation, Help navigation and Secondary navigation? And why Google did not penalize such untrustworthy act?
It is stated clearly in Google’s Hidden text and links – Webmaster Help Center that the use of hidden text “can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy”.
Does it mean that a PR7 site can hide text using CSS and not get penalized?
I discovered the hidden text several months ago when trying to figure out how Google generate sitelinks for some of these high PR sites.
When I searched for free keyword tool, Wordtracker was Number 1 and appeared to be “authoritative” site with a list of sitelinks.
Initially, I didn’t want to blow up the matter and waited for the PageRank update to see if Google will take action and downgrade Worktracker.com but nothing changed. Worktracker continues to be a “trusted” site.
Now that we know Google “tolerated” certain hidden text technique using CSS, you may want to try it on a MFA or throw-away site. Here’s how Wordtracker did the trick.
Hide Text with CSS Position:Absolute & Left:-999em
The hidden words to be hidden were enclosed within <em> and </em> tags.
Click Here to View Full-size Image
The <em> attribute was modified with absolute position and the words were placed way out of the viewable area.
Click Here to View Full-size Image
Warning: Use the above Hidden Text CSS technique at your own risk! You may be penalized by Google eventually.
Tags: Google, Hidden Text, SEO, Wordtracker
See Also...
- Text ad copy for PPC
I first used PPC e.g. Google Adsense more than... - Google Dropping – What Do You Do?
Search engine optimization is so competitive that some resort... - SMX Singapore 2008
I was invited to speak at the inaugural SMX...
January 25th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353
“If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages.”
I think the key is whether it is “deceptive in intent”, and for the case of Wordtracker, it’s probably more for aesthetic web design purposes, rather than to trick Google.
Willy Lim
http://www.NetProfitQuest.com
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 am
Of no offense to Willy, I think your conclusion might be wrong. Being aesthetic is one thing, but for whatever reason should WT place information on non-viewable location? Since it’s not even viewable, why bother to include that text/data/info in the site? If it’s spam, it’s spam.