Invisible Text OK?

[ticketauction]

I just ran across this on a site pointed out by anyother WPW meber-- it goes against everythign I have learned so I am curious

Invisible text
OK - No penalty - Google advises against this.
All over the place - but nothing is ever done. (The text is the same color as the background, and hence cannot be seen by the viewer, but is visible to the search engine spiders.)

[JKomp]

Its a thin line they tread. I would certainly advise against invisible text, i mean you might get a way with it for a while, but you're taking an unnecessary risk. Not to mention the fact that it is utterly unprofessional, google is right to penalise those that use such techniques. If the content is not of high enough quality to be visible on your site then delete it. If it is good quality then why make it invisible?

[greeneagle]

ticketauction,

There's really nothing to it when you find a "jewel in the rough"... Just go here:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Ken

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by ticketauction

I just ran across this on a site pointed out by anyother WPW meber-- it goes against everythign I have learned so I am curious

Invisible text is done for one reason only... to try and manipulate rankings. Anything done to try and intentionally influence or manipulate rankings rather than earn them cannot be a good thing in the long run.

Dave

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by crankydave

Invisible text is done for one reason only... to try and manipulate rankings.

Since the topic is more general, I'd like to add that invisible text (made invisible by display:none) is used also for accessibility issues. Just one example: You can add a "Skip navigation" link which is only "visible" in text browsers. Or you could employ navigational elements which are only visible if the browser supports media: handheld ...

All this is "visible" to SEs, but invisible for common browsers. So, invisible text is not bad in itself.

Apart form that, I agree with Dave.

Alex

[ticketauction]

ok cool, not that I planned on using it or anything, I don't do blackhat stuff, but I found it curious out of all the things they DO punish this may not be one of them.


On a side note, I actually used invisible text to help me with spacing issues once. I added a period because I needed to move something over and my html was to limited to figure out how to do it otherwise. :)

[crankydave]

Since the topic is more general, I'd like to add that invisible text (made invisible by display:none) is used also for accessibility issues. Just one example: You can add a "Skip navigation" link which is only "visible" in text browsers. Or you could employ navigational elements which are only visible if the browser supports media: handheld ...

All this is "visible" to SEs, but invisible for common browsers. So, invisible text is not bad in itself.

Agreed.

Dave