[thelist] More on Search Engines

James evolt at reather.net
Wed Dec 10 08:22:36 CST 2003


Brian Cummiskey wrote:
>> Not legitimate. The SE's don't like any text that is deliberately
>> written for the SE's and hidden to users.
>
> Ok, but what about on legit CSS/XHTML sites...
>
> For example, I have:
>
> #############################################
>
> <div class="heading">
> <h1 class="hide">sitename here</h1>
> </div>
> ------------------
> #heading {
> background: url(blah.jpg);
> }
>
> .hide {
> Display:none;
> }

If someone reports you to Google for that, you'll (probably) get away with
that - you're not trying to deceive anyone.  You'll be in trouble if you try
this, though:

<div class="heading"><h1 class="hide">cheap widget, bargain widgets, we sell
cut price widgets here</h1></div>
------------------
#heading { background: url(blah.jpg); }
.hide { Display:none; }

- which is what you see so often.  There are perfectly innocent uses for
hidden divs, which is why no search engine has (yet) implemented an
automatic penalty for them AFAIK.  Google will (apparently) do a manual
check of sites which get reported for 'bad' use of hidden divs.

Honest SEO types are steering clear of hidden divs for fear of there being
an automatic penalty some time soon...  :-)

James



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