Isn’t it interesting the places Lady Drama chooses to drop her robe, spinning everybody into gawking with covered mouths and gossip to spread? The whispers immediately crescendoed into a web-rattling holler across the servers—Financial Times was busted for hidden links!

And so, all the elements of drama present themselves in exquisite giddiness, those words that excite the most stoic browser of book covers—Deceit, Betrayal, Greed, Hypocrisy, Corruption. The dirt, man, the dirt. We’re on the edge of our seats to see if Google serves the search warrant to a major Internet player, or will power triumph over justice?

Ken McGaffin, an online marketer and link builder, broke the story last Friday. He used the “select all” feature on the Financial Times website and discovered links to Moneysupermarket.com—138 of them, all presented in white to match the background. McGaffin appears to have found the links by accident while doing a competitive link analysis for a client. To find the links on such a reputable site, he says, was suprising.

“Using 'hidden links' is one of the oldest methods of search engine spam so you wouldn't expect to see them on a respected news site like the Financial times online, (FT.com). FT.com describes itself as ‘the world's leading audited business website, with more than 3.7 million unique users’,” said McGaffin in his weblog.

For those of you just tuning in, using hidden links on a website is a marketing trick decidedly on the “black hat” side of the fence. It’s an attempt to manipulate search engine algorithms which take into account how many times a website is linked to by other sites. The more links, the higher the ranking.

FT.com, it would appear, sold nearly a gross of links to Moneysupermarket.com, and buried them in the background so nobody would see but algorithms.

This is a really dirty trick and many are surprised because of the size of the entities involved. Selling links is a method that many people frown upon, but selling a 138 of them and then burying them in an attempt to spam search engines has even “gray hatters” doing spit-takes.

FT.com didn’t take long to grab a towel to wipe off the egg dripping down its nose. As of Monday, FT.com has removed the hidden links and provided one very visible link. According to McGaffin, FT.com said they didn’t know how this happened.

McGaffin goes on to ask some poignant questions.
1. Why does FT.com appear to be ignoring one of Google's top quality guidelines, "Avoid hidden text or hidden links". Such practices are of course also frowned on by other search engines.
2. Is FT.com selling such links? And if so, who else might they sell hidden links to?
3. Is buying such links common practice for Moneysupermarket.com? If so, who else might they buy hidden links from?
4. Why are the links hidden? Six partners are visible on FT.com with links to their respective websites. Why is Moneysupermarket.com not listed visibly with the other partners?
McGaffin, himself, has raised eyebrows among fellow search engine marketers. It is surprising to some that he would out someone else’s tactics. Some are calling it sour grapes.

A few comments from SEOBook’s blog:

“SEOs shouldn't rat on other SEOs. This is a bold publicity move that I personally would never do.”

“I would have more respect for Ken McGaffin [currently zero and falling] if his article wasn't just a whine about getting beaten in the SERP's.”

“…placing blatent self promotion in outing does lower the trust / value factor significantly. Based on how the article reads it lends to the assumption that there was no attempt to contact the webmasters prior to writing it.”

The most interesting development in this story will be how King Google responds. Google has dropped many a site from their listings for these types of tactics. But FT.com is one of those sites with big recognition and big money. It wouldn’t be in Google’s best interest, from solely a business standpoint, to drop FT.com on its ear in the cyber street. It’s like de-listing the New York Times or Bloomburg. You might as well drop the Library of Congress while you’re at it. Search purists will definitely have their eyes on Google who champions the no-nonsense nature of their service.

In Norway, the association of companies have made a socalled "Safe Catalogue"

http://www.tryggkatalog.no/

Which sites do you think you find on this site?

A related site is "The alert list."

http://www.varslingslisten.no/

"The Google search engine maintains an index of all of its internet data across a set of servers located various physically separate Google Data Centers. Search queries are distributed to the Data Centers via the Google Name Server. Updates to the index will occur gradually as one server after another updates. While updating is in progress, it is possible to obtain a different Google index for the same website at different times. This process is sometimes called the Google dance. This movement of the index allows you to follow the beginning of an update process and to estimate the final site index position after the update process is finished".
Source: http://www.seoadministrator.com/data_centers.html

Is it possible for Google to dance better than human beings?

Is it possible to have an option that is safer than safe search?

Sometimes spiders is better than human beings.

"He said, the only thing that did not lie was mathematics, simply because it could not."

Kjell Gunnar Bleivik
http://multifinanceit.com/

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Mini Network:: Financial information at your fingertips
Learn object oriented programming where it started

It's common for big sites to do this. It's nessasary to pass on much needed PR to partners sites.

For example, housevalues.com uses hidden links to pass on Google PR rank to justlisted.com. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and you have to do what ever it takes to get your sites the rank they need to be spidered by Google.

The first question that came to my mind was, "Were FT aware that their website was set up with hidden links like this?"

If they employ an outside company to do their SEO, I bet that company is no longer employed.

But if not, then FT should get a big spanking where it hurts....banish them from Google!!!

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Marc Holt
http://aardvarkzone.com and aardvarkzone.com/holtblog/

Nonsense! Industry leaders should be just that - leaders. If their partner websites are any good they should be available to the public.

Churning out links to gain PR especially hidden ones is one of the main reasons PageRank is so devalued.

This behavior of the FT doesn't surprise me a bit. It is just revealing the truth a little further. Their articles are largely "bought" by finance and industry. If you want to read something neutral, you must look at the rates and shareprices they are publishing. I wouldn't be surprised if one day they are also differing from what has been officially fixed. I wouldn't accept this paper as wrapping on the fish market.

Hidden links. Anyone aware about this subject can judge how low one must have sunk, especially when you make money on it. Toilet paper.

No hidden links on this site? No hidden software?

Nobody is so nervous as that person that never took a risk. Is that me?

Kgun
In total there are 68 users online :: 9 Registered, 2 Hidden and 57 Guests

Now I am more paranoid, but on a higher level.

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Mini Network:: Financial information at your fingertips
Learn object oriented programming where it started

There are a lot of companies that don't play fair. I am curious to see what google does about this and if it gets picked up in the media. I look forward to any updates.

Of course there's always the chance that a CSS link style was "accidentially" set to the same color as the background ;)

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Street Racers UK - Car Modifying Online
Tickle Site UK - A FUN place to be!!

sure! all 138 of them! ooops! we accidentally set 138 links to same color as the background. My bad.

Think I'll go accidentally kiss somebody else's wife. Then I can accidentally get shot. 138 bullet holes her husband can say he was unaware of because they blended in with my red shirt.

If I were the "unaware" boss at FT.com, I'd be rolling some heads.

One of the questions that immediately came up for me when I saw this story was the wisdom of the FT partnering with MoneySupermarket at all, let alone using hidden links. A search for moneysupermarket.com revealed some sleazy looking practices going back to when the site was created. I wonder what they were thinking.[/url]

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Mark Reichard
iData Technologies www.idatatechnologies.com - SEO Friendly Content Management

ca-CHING! (That's all that they were thinking. It is spelled with many dollar signs.)

Brian.

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ToolBarn.com, an Internet Retailer Top 500 and Inc. 500 Company | Tool Parts | Pet Supplies

FT = Financial Toiletpaper

Never trust a newspaper that does not have a daily comic strip and a horoscope side by side. I knew they were into something dirty!

Metro rules!*


*(ok, in cosideration to the folks not in the UK I will explain. Metro is a free newspaper distributed in the London Underground)

They knew what they were doing, they should have some of their PageRank taken away, at least a point, other sites get dropped a point for selling visible links, they should definatly get dropped one for selling invisible links.

I do have a stinking suspicion that FT.com's site development also its SEO functions (if they had any written in the contract) would most probably have been sub-contracted out to some webmaster somewhere.

I think if FT.com was delisted we'll be following a very nice lawsuit here

Not much of a dilemma - it's a fact of life. The sad thing is that they could have just done it legitimately and openly by having the links in the footer.

In the industry I work in; the 800 pound gorilla is infousa.com. They and one other company are the only two that have gotten past the URL age heavy sites that rank for "mailing list" and "mailing lists".

Check their links out... link:www.infousa.com - Google Search

What stands out is that they have 18,00+ links - and many of them are from the bottom of Yahoo's travel sites...

But hey - it's part of the game. We've got out challenge cut out for us... (Now is when we hire an experienced SEO company based on performance )

I just don't understand why the links needed to be hidden. Seems like a regular old link would have fit just fine.

With that being said I don't think FT should be demoted or banned, getting outted for this misguided use of linking is punishment enough. I also wonder who did it, them or an SEO.

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