feedthebot.com How to follow the Google webmaster guidelines

 

 

Google webmaster guidelines > Quality guidelines > Guideline one of eight in this category states...

 

 

Definitions

 

hidden text - Text on a webpage that is barely visible or not visible at all to a user.

hidden link - Links on a webpage that are barely visible or not visible at all to a user.

 

Examples and Explanations

Hidden text and links are easily spotted by search engines and is not beneficial to your website, in fact websites can be removed from the Google index for using this method of deception.

A few years ago when search engine results were determined by only the words on a webpage, many people started hiding dozens or hundreds of words on their pages to increase their ranking. This method no longer works, but people still try it.

 

Hidden text

Hidden text is any text that is not visible to the user. This deception technique is no longer wide spread because it doesn't help your rankings anymore. Hidden text is just words on a webpage that are the same color as the background or the page, rendering it invisible to users, but still visible to search engine spiders.

An example of hidden text and almost hidden text...

 

 

The first two "Text example - Can you see me?" phrases are visible by users.

The last two "Text example - Can you see me?" phrases are barely perceptible by users and would be considered hidden text.

There are many different method of hiding text. If you want to ensure you are following this guideline, make sure all text and links are clearly visible to a user.

This may affect a new webmaster if they decide for a design reason to have a text color that almost matches the background. It is possible to unintentionally be violating this guideline and it can cause your website to seem less trustable and in some cases can result in the removal of your site from the Google index.

 

Hidden links

Hidden links are are when the hidden text of a web page has a link on it.

 

Key concept

 

All text and links in your webpage should be clearly visible to a user.

 

How to determine if your website is following this guideline

 

How to check for hidden text and links

The quickest way to see all the elements of a webpage is to use hold down the "a" key and the "control" key on your keyboard at the same time while viewing a web page. This will highlight all text on the page (including the hidden text). This can also be achieved by choosing "edit" and then "select all" from the menu near the top of your browser.

There are also some tools to check this online, see resources below.

 

Resources

 

From Google employees:

Hidden links are commented on by Matt Cutts of Google

From other sources:

This is an online "spam" detector (pretty clever idea). Using this tool will help you identify if their is hidden text on you page (it also looks for other deception techniques as well). I use this tool often while examining sites for potential problems.

Hidden text detector

The Wikipedia description of hidden text

What is hidden text?