Re: White Text
Don't worry about it if you're putting white text on a dark background. It won't trip any flags in the search engines.
There is truth to the "white text on white background" statement though. Bear in mind that having the foreground colour the same as the text colour, whether it's white or not, will likely get your site flagged for review.
The issue lies in the assumption that "hidden text" as it's called, indicates that the page was designed to game the search engines and gain an unfair advantage over better constructed and higher ranking sites.
First and foremost, as Web Developers, Designers and SEO experts, we're called upon to develop and optimize pages with the user in mind. In doing so, there should never be any reason to employ "hidden text" techniques to gain better rankings.
For the most part, it's got to be substantial and appear intentional. Let common sense prevail. If there's a reasonable explanation for it, it's unlikely that you'd see any issues arise.
Most often, these sites are manually reported by visitors. So, consider that if THEY see an obvious problem, the site reviewer probably will to.
If it's flagged for review and the reviewer decides it's an obvious attempt to game the search engines, it'll result in the site getting removed from the index until the issue is resolved and a re-inclusion request is submitted. It'll likely take some time but they'll revisit the site and reevaluate it for inclusion.
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