Text and background colors

[johreiki]

Awhile back, I heard (from several sources) that there was a possibility of being penalized by SEs, if a page had text of the same color as the body background-color; for example, a paragraph of white text with green background, on a page with white background. Can anyone tell me the latest consensus on this? Even better, a definitive answer!!


Thanks in advance -----
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[Gregse]

Hmm - dunno about a definitive answer - but it sounds like your SPAMMING and as far as I'm aware thats a no-no.
So you want to hide text from the viewers to feed engines - as a viewer I think thats off cos your conning me into coming to your site and if thats the case Id probably ot revisit. As as SE I guess that they may think the same.
Why not simply give people content they want/need?
Optimise for the client and traffic will inevitably - tho maybe slower come to you - but you may not be shot down in the process.

My thoughts only - others in The SEO community may disagree.
Keep well.

[cspelts]

I don't think johreiki is suggesting anything spammy - if I understood correctly, he's asking about white text in a green box, on a white page. It's a valid question - especially since many sites use a white background for the body text and a colored background with white text for the navigation.

I can tell you that on one of my sites I do exactly that - even down to the green box - and I have not been penalised.

[Gregse]

Hi Joh and CS,
It seems I have misunderstood the issue and I apologise for the rant. Is see your question now.
Since color text on a color block is a standard tool - I may wrongly (again) presume that SE algorythms look at the code wrapping of a text block.
I would have thought that the "Big G" would not be so simplistic to compare "just" txt to bg.
I mean I can do txt in tables, txt in Divs and so on and make them the same color and "hide" it and Im sure that these are picked up (over time). That implies the check is on txt location relative to immediate placement.

But hey - I cant even read a question properly :)

Assumptions are the mother of all stuffups, but my tarnished 2 cents worth is - no, its not. But sorry thats not definitive and I'll try to moderate my rants in future :)

Keep well and aplogies.

[johreiki]

Originally Posted by cspelts

I don't think johreiki is suggesting anything spammy - if I understood correctly, he's asking about white text in a green box, on a white page. It's a valid question - especially since many sites use a white background for the body text and a colored background with white text for the navigation.

I can tell you that on one of my sites I do exactly that - even down to the green box - and I have not been penalised.

Thanks very much! I've also seen other sites doing this....but had read previously that some SEs seemed only to take note of the bgcolor of the page, not of the particular element containing the text.

I'm going to trust that they've corrected that by now, and do it....

Thanks for the encouragement!

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[johreiki]

Originally Posted by Gregse

Hi Joh and CS,
It seems I have misunderstood the issue and I apologise for the rant. Is see your question now.
Since color text on a color block is a standard tool - I may wrongly (again) presume that SE algorythms look at the code wrapping of a text block.

Apology accepted! : ^ ) It seems to me, also, that they would look at the text color and immediate background color as a pair. Feels like a safe bet....

Thanks for the response -----

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[KeithO]

the spiders have gotten smarter and can see the difference. i wouldn't worry too much. you could try doing this:

[jestep]

I think that SE's are much too smart to penalize for something as simple as this. I don't think that there is any way to get penalized for this. We did have he discussions about the background color being controlled with css, which could possible make it look like hidden text, but I've never heard of any penalty for anyone doing this.

[KeithO]

Originally Posted by jestep

I think that SE's are much too smart to penalize for something as simple as this. I don't think that there is any way to get penalized for this. We did have he discussions about the background color being controlled with css, which could possible make it look like hidden text, but I've never heard of any penalty for anyone doing this.

actually according to Google's specific recommendations:

# Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
# Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
# Don't send automated queries to Google.
# Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
# Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
# Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

based on that, I think they do. and considering that its colors are based on hex, I'm sure the algo has a buffer of color contrast that is acceptable or where its nearly identical.

[adbart]

Um... I don't think he meant that the whole idea of hidden text was far too simplistic and that it wasn't taken into account.

He was saying that he thought same-as-page-colour text was OK when on top of a differently-coloured table cell.

We all agree that Google penalise sites that try to hide text.

[KeithO]

What I was trying to discribe was where you have a background color of #EEEEEE and text of #FFFFFF. there won't be enough contrast there for the user to be able to read it. I believe Google penalizes for this type of behavior.

[adbart]

Now I was under the impression that they do.

But here's an example that might make you think again.

If you take a look at www.beautifulcards-direct.com then you will see that there is TONS of semi-hidden text all over the page.

Yet it is not completely hidden.

The page is indexed by Google - do a search for "Beautiful Cards Direct". It is at #1, out of just under 4 million results.

The PageRank score for the page is 4/10.

It may just be that Google haven't caught up with them yet, but this evidence does suggest the contrary to what you are saying.

Any comments on this?

[KeithO]

Originally Posted by adbart

Now I was under the impression that they do.

But here's an example that might make you think again.

If you take a look at www.beautifulcards-direct.com then you will see that there is TONS of semi-hidden text all over the page.

Yet it is not completely hidden.

The page is indexed by Google - do a search for "Beautiful Cards Direct". It is at #1, out of just under 4 million results.

The PageRank score for the page is 4/10.

It may just be that Google haven't caught up with them yet, but this evidence does suggest the contrary to what you are saying.

Any comments on this?

I'd say they just haven't been caught yet. If you look, they only have 9 backlinks and have adSense on their site as well. typically, not always, if you put the site name in the search, they will show up 1st. if you search for 'handmade greeting card designs', they show up 4th. the #1 rank is has a PR 3, 16 backlinks (all from within the site), and has lots of hidden text as well. Only other connecting thing is that the one you list is Canadian while this one is UK. I could stretch out to say that US Google has a more advanced spider and filters in overseas Google results into its SERP w/o checking them theirselves.

Other notes, they disable right clicking which is suspect, they registered the domain on 10/2000 for 7 years, its being hosted on a free hosting service provider (who is also the nameserver).
http://www.register.com/whois_verify...ce4a15035a8380
I just think they haven't been caught yet. Their #1 listing on DMOZ might influence it as well.

[adbart]

You say they just haven't been caught yet, but isn't the whole process automated?

I can't believe Google manually plough through sites looking for suspect ones. Surely they simply parse the code of websites that they cache on a constant basis, and look for things like similar BG and text colours.

[KeithO]

it may take an update or two but it will catch up to them.

[adbart]

mm possibly.

I'll look out and see.

[johreiki]

Originally Posted by KeithO

the spiders have gotten smarter and can see the difference. i wouldn't worry too much. you could try doing this:

Thanks -- you gave me a good chuckle with that one!

Thanks to everyone who has responded on this question. Lots of good input....


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[KeithO]

Originally Posted by johreiki

Thanks -- you gave me a good chuckle with that one!

Thanks to everyone who has responded on this question. Lots of good input....


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Maybe the spider has a sense of humor too?
I just noticed you are located in Hawaii. One of my best friends has alot of family over on the Big Island and we plan on going out and visiting later this year.

[johreiki]

Originally Posted by KeithO

Maybe the spider has a sense of humor too?

Let's hope so!!

Originally Posted by KeithO

I just noticed you are located in Hawaii. One of my best friends has alot of family over on the Big Island and we plan on going out and visiting later this year.

Cool -- get in touch with me then, if you like.....


All the best -----
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