Same colour font a no no?

[Andy-Always]

I always thought that using the same colour font and tiny characters was the first big no no for any site designer!

A competitor search this morning reveals it is working for some...

Altavista UK - Search term: ("pc repairs" sevenoaks) displays no. 1, 2, 3 in the rankings as; www.pcliverpool.co.uk/

"CTRL A" reveals a huge page of towns in England

3 questions....

Is this acceptable to search engines?

Why use the "@" symbol after each town?

Why would a company only servicing the Liverpool area want hits from all around the countyry?

Interesting!

PC Repairs

[paulhiles]

I see this sort of thing all the time, Andy-Always. The site owners are playing a dangerous game if they persist with these tactics. I guess it's a risk they are prepared to take, and while they're in the top few spots in the rankings, they see it as a gamble that's paying off.

Is this acceptable to search engines?

No it isn't, and it's a fairly blatant SEO tactic that larger search engines will actively try to weed out. Spiders will pick up the black text against the black background, and it should be flagged. The hidden text is really bad in this instance, so I would expect the site to be penalised.

Why would a company only servicing the Liverpool area want hits from all around the countyry?

I have a number of competitors who claim to be London web design agencies, but they're actually based in Birmingham or the East coast. What can I say? Some extreme cases are not even in this country... I used to have one site appearing above mine that were located in Bulgaria! :o) The bottom line is that companies will always want to spread their net as wide as possible, especially if they are seeking lucrative or desirable markets.

Just send a Spam report to Google and concentrate on improving your own site. I've wasted too much time and grief myself over instances like this, and to be honest, it's not really worth it! :o)

Paul

[Andy-Always]

What about the @ symbol?????

why put the @ symbol immediately after each town name in a list?

PC Repairs

[minstrel]

What about the @ symbol?????

why put the @ symbol immediately after each town name in a list?

PC Repairs

Often to designate a major category or subcategory, with aditional subcategories below it. Or alternatively in some directoires, it may be to designate it as a dynamically constructed category.