Hidden Text

[Joe Singh]

Hi,

what is Hidden Text? is it necessary to use in contents of website?

[SEOWebHelp]

Hidden text is just hiding the text on your page from visitors, but search engine crawlers can still see it. Most people that do this change the color of the text to match the background of the page. If the page is white, then the text will be white too.

Don't use this method, it is black hat and google doesn't like it either.

[govindseo]

i think this type of tactics known as black hat techniques i suggest you don't use this thing!!!

[Jeremy80]

I also do not recommend this strategy. 10+ years ago this strategy actually worked. You could put a bunch of hidden text on your page and suddenly rank well for phrases that didn't even seem to be on the page. The search engines have since found ways to combat this black hat technique. Now if you do this, you stand a good chance of getting penalized by the search engines. Most search engines clearly state that they do no allow hidden text.

[Dinghus]

The search engines look at the font color vs the backgound color. If the colors are within a few shades, it is considered hidden text. If you think about that, does it give you some ideas about how to fool them?

This technique still works though not as well because the keywords in the body are not as important as they once were. Still important but inbound links seem to be tops right now. That will change again, I'm sure.

[xuchunfeng1984]

dont use this hidden text. i think google can see it .and consider it as a black tech.

[weegillis]

Originally Posted by Joe Singh

what is Hidden Text? ...

You know now not to use the technique since SEs can read your CSS and will ban a site for hiding content from users, but not for robots.

The above notwithstanding, you must also pay close attention to the contrast between foreground and background colors. If the colors are too close in hue and density it could be construed as 'an attempt to hide content' from human readers. It would raise flags, possibly requiring human checks, which would definitely slow down indexing.

The general message should be clear: Don't hide text from readers that is intended for robots. This goes for comment spam, too (keywords stuffed into html comments). Contrary to what some may believe, body text is important, and should be rich and topic oriented for easy indexing.

[Janna122003]

Originally Posted by Joe Singh

Hi,

what is Hidden Text? is it necessary to use in contents of website?

hidden text on content is a blackhat method which may lead to your site to be banned.

It is better if you would use content on your site to attract search engine.

[geyser]

When visiting a website hidden text discourage me, like when I'm reading a part of a blog and scrolled down and accidentally clicked on something that looks like it wasn't there makes me irritated..

this was just my experience.. by the way like what all of them said hidden text will get you penalized by google..

[Dubbya]

In truth using hidden divs is quite common and there's nothing wrong with it when done to improve the user experience or when used as an integral part of the page.

In general, there are a few things to be wary of.

• Do not hide text without good reason.
• Do not make the font colour the same as your background colour.
• Hidden or not, do not position a hidden div offscreen (outside browser dimensions) where it can't and won't ever be seen.

These things set off flags that usually result in a site being inspected and evaluated by a human reviewer.

Essentially, what matters to the reviewer is the intent behind using hidden text or divs. If the reviewer can plainly see that the hidden text or div is being used as a subversive method to game the search engine, they'll penalize the site.

Consider the following scenario:

<style>
#myhiddendiv {

  background-color:#fff;
  color:#fff;
  width:400px;
  margin-left:-2000px;
  display:none;
}
</style>

<div id="myhiddendiv">this is my hidden div with some invisible text.</div>

The intent here would be so blatantly obvious that a human review would get this site penalized or removed from the index entirely.

[regmac]

Originally Posted by govindseo

i think this type of tactics known as black hat techniques i suggest you don't use this thing!!!

If you don't know exactly how to work with it, then better not try it as it may hurt not only you but your site. It could lead to losing reputation and in worse cases getting banned by SEs whom used to observe this type of malicious activity.

[applepink]

people who usually don't know much about what they are doing ended up using some blackhat techniques, that is why discussions like this one really helps in improving their skills and also their knowledge..

[Jonathan Aston]

some website use white text on a white background or hide text behind images or divs, google and other search engines have algorithms to detect this type of things, if this type of activity is found many websites are sent to the google sandbox - i.e. sent to the naughty corner for months!

[shakir]

As all said hidden text is black hat... but for one of my site since 4 yrs having hidden text and not penalized and getting some unique clicks from Google not for that hidden keywords

[Dubbya]

When used in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings, hidden text isn't so much "black hat SEO" as it is just plain stupid.

I use hidden divs all the time but it's always viewable through an onclick or page load.

Even if id did get flagged for review, any reviewer would plainly see it's not being used to game the engines, so there's nothing to worry about.

[ctabuk]

You may have noticed that Joe Singh has no forum sig - that's because I advised him of the fact that his site was full of hidden text. I am pleased to see that he is learning from you guys.

[avoir des goûts simples]

Wow... So that is good for joe. But can he place his sig againonce he delete all hidden text on his site. Well, for Joe, he can still do the best for his site without even dong the black hat technique.

[IlikeMarketing]

Basically it's a technique try to deceive the search engines by using the same font text color as your background.

As govidseo suggests, it is a blackhat that will get your site banned if search engines find you..

[weegillis]

Originally Posted by IlikeMarketing

...if search engines find you..

...when.
There is no question of 'if.'

[lailascott]

hidden text is a black hat method used to spam keywords and appears invisible to human eye. there are many ways to hide text. one way is by making the font smaller and making it invisible by using the same color as the background.