Does CSS have any negative effect on ranking in the SERPs?

[Kate 555]

What makes me ask this question is we can trick search engines by using CSS. For example; we can show them an <H1> which is only 1px in size etc. Moreover, this style is placed in an external javascript file unreadable by the crawlers. Im talking about something which can be done by CSS I discussed at http://forums.seochat.com/showpost.p...39&postcount=8

Again my question is : Does using any CSS on a page can effect negatively on its rankins?


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[steveareeno]

Kate -
CSS is supposed to be the favored method for web sites according to the new standards put out by W3C (www.w3.org). At least this is my understanding. It is also my understanding that they are not advocating usage of tables per your other message.

[nourdine]

Personally I dont think GG is gonna ban your sites just cuz you use some CSS in a malicious way. Lately I have run an experiment in my blog aimed to confirm this hypotesis of mine. And this is the result: http://www.nourdine.org/index.php?itemid=81

Anyhow the guyz at GG have recently stated that GG is more and more able to read CSS and to find out if some1 is trynna fool it.

I also can assure you that Googlbot has never ever requested my CSS so I cant see how it could read my CSS if it has never saved them in some GG's local hard disk.

but hey ... i'm just running wild with my immagination. nobody knows what GG can and cannot do.

cheerio

[pagetta]

from what i understand css/xml is the way forward - it keeps your code cleaner, your content more structured and makes life a lot easier for those spiders to come and see what your site's about.


As for malicious techniques that you talk about yes these can be a problem and is suspect the Goog will continually tweak its algos in order to spot the difference between those using css for genuine design/navigation reasons (eg drop down menus) and those using it for more malicious techniques.

in my experience css if used properly can only serve to help your rankings - that's not to say using css gives you an advantag but it helps in terms of making your html cleaner/better.