Susan and WPG?? [Archive] - SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums

MazY

16-01-2002, 17:43/05:43PM

I am of the following opinion:

My Grand-Father used to keep guns on his walls. (Before the containership laws were tigthended.) We, as children, would often visit and he would take great pride in teaching us what he knew about guns.

(a.) Because he enjoyed the sound of his own voice. (Must be where I get it from.)

(b.) He could speak with knowledge on the subject.

(c.) He felt, as my parents still do today, that everyone should know something about everything, where possible. This, supposedly, encourages a diverse range of opinions and tolerances.

Now, being given this information on how effective guns could be did not make me want to go and get one, install them in my house or in fact, even think about guns from one day to the next. Why not?

Simply because as an adult I am mature enough to weigh up for myself the dangers, etc of having a gun in my house. And even if I have a gun in my house, I don't have to use it. And even if I have to use one, at least I could use one with a degree of knowledge on what I should be doing.

If we were talking about teaching children to take drugs, for example, I could understand. But I'm assuming that the newsletter goes out to a pretty mature audience. Information is empowerment. (I must stop reading those Bill Gates books.)

How any one uses that information is a personal decision but you are entitled to possess the facts, the know-how, the pros & cons and so forth. You can't do this if it is swept under the carpet, pretending it doesn't exist.

There, I've done it now. There ya go, Mel. My issue of the week. :D

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 17:49/05:49PM

I would agree with you if we were talking about little o'l joesmoe newsletter. This is WPG,... well-known and respected. I am sure their subscriber base is full of new webmasters to the net.

They are not saying anything about Google openly telling you to Not do it. They Are saying this is the way to do it.

MazY

16-01-2002, 17:51/05:51PM

Originally posted by ihelpyou
They are not saying anything about Google openly telling you to Not do it. They Are saying this is the way to do it.

But have you checked all other issues to ensure that they have not stated that elsewhere? Remember, this is one article of Lord knows how many.

I think it unfair to demand a "full report" before you've weighed everything up.

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 17:55/05:55PM

An article is an article, no matter what they might say elsewhere. That article could be the first thing a new webmaster may see. They may not see other articles posted somewhere else from WPG.

I hold that the article should have been explained more fully with a link leading to the Google TOS page that clearly tells everyone the basic forms of spam out there and to avoid them.

MazY

16-01-2002, 18:01/06:01PM

Originally posted by ihelpyou
I hold that the article should have been explained more fully with a link leading to the Google TOS page that clearly tells everyone the basic forms of spam out there and to avoid them.

I hold that Jill's newsletters should be less informal but they are not. (Sorry to use yours Jill but it illustrated my point perfectly.)

We can't go around dictating how people write their newsletters. That is a company's own choice, usually made in accordance with their own internal guidelines and style. When one doesn't like it, then one can just unsubscribe, as I did with Jill's.

Now, if a reader goes on the strength of one article and implements that without any further investigation then I would be questioning the intelligence of the reader, not the author.

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 18:06/06:06PM

I know Maz, but it's articles like this that are prevalent on the net. A new webmaster has no clue when starting out. I am just saying that a reputable company should be clarifying their stance on this particular issue as it can and will affect people. If left as is, they will affect people.

I certainly remember when I started. Got burned many a time for stuff I read.

Advisor

16-01-2002, 18:20/06:20PM

Doug,

This may come as a shock to you, but I do believe that many of the "top" SEO firms out there use hidden links. Just go to some of the ones listed in Marketing Sherpa and look at their code ;)

I know of one company off the top of my head, in fact. One I even like very much.

Jill

Maz, We're now doing the newsletter in the n-u-d-e...it's a shame you'll be missing it! :p

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 18:26/06:26PM

This may come as a shock to you, but I do believe that many of the "top" SEO firms out there use hidden links.
You know that is no shock to me. :)

Just because people do this does not mean it is right. Also does not mean reputable people should be promoting it when everyone knows you should not use them or risk the consequences.

Advisor

16-01-2002, 18:28/06:28PM

Personally, I think on the scale of "bad things to do" in SEO, the hidden link thing is waaaaaaay down on the list. I even know of a few legitimate reasons why one might use them (although you might disagree).

Jill

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 18:33/06:33PM

Absolutely disagree. No reasons at all to hide links.

Anything a search engine spider can see but a browser cannot see is spam IMO.

If the link is soo important to include the page in the search engine, why hide it from a browser? What's important to the engine, is important to the viewer.

Advisor

16-01-2002, 18:46/06:46PM

Perhaps the issue I'm thinking of is not relevant any more because the engines are better at spidering dynamic pages and there are other work arounds. However, many years ago, I had a client site that used a particular kind of shopping cart that generated URLs that the engines could not follow at the time. They had a lot of great content regarding all of the products they sold. In fact, we wrote a lot of good new content for each main category page and put this content on the unspiderable pages. Now granted, this small company could have scrapped their entire shopping cart set up and spent a lot of money to redesign a whole new, SE friendly set up, but we needed to find the cheapest alternative. What I did was simply create exact duplicate pages of the main product category pages, only these were static html pages and didn't use the question marks, etc. The only thing that made sense as a way of putting them within the site was by using hidden links on the main page and the other pages to these static pages.

I saw nothing wrong with doing the site this way, as the pages were exactly the same as the ones the engines couldn't spider (through no fault of my client's). When a user would find the static page from a search engine, any the links were all the same as the dynamic page and they would be led through the site as if they hit the dynamic page.

Spamming? I think not!

Jill

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 18:50/06:50PM

You are right but now there is a couple of things to consider.

First, the spiders are getting better about following dynamic links, even fairly deep.

Second, why not simply put one little visible link on the front page that says.... "Site Map"? On that site map you have more visible links leading to any and all pages that you wish the search engine to find.

Very simple and very not spam. Problem solved.

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 19:11/07:11PM

Now, now, let's not digress and fight over a non-issue.

IMO, what's described in that article is highly likely to lead to spam. You would have to really know what you were doing to avoid it. You would have to know what you were doing so much that the entire article would be redundant. So, who is the article for?

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 19:13/07:13PM

LOL. No fighting from me. I love it when Jill and I disagree with something as we seem to agree on Far tooooo many things as it is. :)

WebSavvy

16-01-2002, 19:16/07:16PM

OK Mom (Jill) and Dad (Doug) time to kiss and make up!

:D

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 19:32/07:32PM

IMO, what's described in that article is highly likely to lead to spam. You would have to really know what you were doing to avoid it. You would have to know what you were doing so much that the entire article would be redundant. So, who is the article for?
ya know Alan? That is one very good question. If not for the many of us out there who already know that Google truly frowns upon this practice, then who? Must be for those of us out there who are unfamiliar with the search engines. That is precisely why I am not a happy camper. :rolleyes:

Advisor

16-01-2002, 19:38/07:38PM

Originally posted by ihelpyou
You are right but now there is a couple of things to consider.

First, the spiders are getting better about following dynamic links, even fairly deep.

Second, why not simply put one little visible link on the front page that says.... "Site Map"? On that site map you have more visible links leading to any and all pages that you wish the search engine to find.

Very simple and very not spam. Problem solved. Yep, good thinking! This was many, many years ago...this particular site. I would do it very differently today. But I still don't consider it spamming, at least not at the time it was done!

I think it is very difficult for engines to pick up on transparent gifs used for invisible links. If I used that technique (and I don't) I wouldn't worry too much about getting banned. But I would not make the name of my transparent gif be something like, transparent.gif either!

Jill

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 19:41/07:41PM

I think it is very difficult for engines to pick up on transparent gifs used for invisible links.On the contrary, it is very simple. Especially when those engines are also running image crawlers. They only have to turn their radars in the right direction and you have a problem.

Advisor

16-01-2002, 20:00/08:00PM

If not for the many of us out there who already know that Google truly frowns upon this practice, then who? Not doubting you, Doug, but do we actually know this for sure? I don't remember reading that in their Webmaster Faqs, but I wouldn't have thought much of it if I had and might not remember.

As you may recall, we know of a number 1 ranking Web site in Google for search engine optimization that uses hidden links, which is why I am questioning whether they actually frown upon this practice or not.

Jill

MazY

16-01-2002, 20:00/08:00PM

Originally posted by Alan Perkins
On the contrary, it is very simple. Especially when those engines are also running image crawlers. They only have to turn their radars in the right direction and you have a problem.

'scuse my interjection if you will but that doesn't make sense to me. Could you provide a practical analysis of how this would be accomplished because, like Jill, I'm struggling to see a cost-effective, time-effective and worthwhile way of detecting a transparent GIF with a link attached to it.

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 20:08/08:08PM

This is one of the check boxes on the Google page:

Hidden text or links

You can find the page here:

http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

another page:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B3
We will not comment on the individual reasons a page was removed and we do not offer an exhaustive list of practices that can cause removal. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text that can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. If you think your site may fall into this category, you might try 'cleaning up' the page and sending a re-inclusion request to help@google.com. We do not make any guarantees about if or when we will re-include your site.

MazY

16-01-2002, 20:11/08:11PM

Doug

I'm not questioning whether it can be easily reported. Even I managed to work out that it can be reported.

What I am questioning is how a search engine can "sense" it.

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 20:14/08:14PM

Originally posted by MazY
'scuse my interjection if you will but that doesn't make sense to me. Could you provide a practical analysis of how this would be accomplished because, like Jill, I'm struggling to see a cost-effective, time-effective and worthwhile way of detecting a transparent GIF with a link attached to it.

The image crawler crawls HTML pages and reads the images it finds there, the ALT text of the images, links to other pages, and so on. It also reads the images to apply porn filters, etc. The image crawler has all the information and ability it needs to detect a transparent image and see there is a hyperlink attached to that image, or ALT text, or other spam. If they desire, they only have to make the image crawler capable of applying a spam penalty to a URL in the regular crawler's database.

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 20:15/08:15PM

I know Maz. I was answering Jill's question and did not see your post. :)

I have no clue as to how a filter could see it, but certainly would not want to take that chance. Especially when a Googlet could easily go to the page and see it for themself.

MazY

16-01-2002, 20:22/08:22PM

Originally posted by Alan Perkins

The image crawler crawls HTML pages and reads the images it finds there

But reads what? Just the ALT Text and any link? That's fine. I can understand that bit. What I can't understand is how it detects that it is transparent.

I know that there was some development not too long back to try and detect such nonsense things as flesh tones to try to help filter out e-mail porn etc but even that has not reached a degree of stable reliability as yet.

So how is it detecting that it is a transparent image?

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 20:29/08:29PM

It detects it is transparent the same way a browser that has to render it detects it is transparent. It reads the image.

Detecting transparency is a lot easier than detecting flesh tones, especially in a one pixel image. Part of the GIF header tells you the transparent colour. Just check the image data to see if it contains only that colour.

In fact, just the image being very small might be enough to trigger a penalty.

MazY

16-01-2002, 20:40/08:40PM

OK That makes more sense. I am dubious about the small image theory though as I know countless webmasters (including myself) who use them as spacers for table columns. But the colour aspect now makes more sense.

Thanks.

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 20:50/08:50PM

No problem. :)

BTW, I only meant small images that are wrapped in a hyperlink, i.e.

<A HREF="linkpage.htm"><IMG SRC="spacer.gif"></A>

may have a problem, but just

<IMG SRC="spacer.gif">

should not.

Mel

16-01-2002, 21:26/09:26PM

As always, thanks Maz, for a contensious issue at last!

But, does Google practice what it preaches?

A month or so ago, you may recall that a certain very well known SEO expert was found to be using invisible layers to deliver a standardized description to spiders, but not to humans, and there was a heated debate here about this. (this description is used by Google for almost every one of its results for this site.)

I have the understanding that Google has received several spam reports about this, but the high PR remains as does the hidden layers.

So if a respected search engine like Google doesn't really care if you use hidden text, what does that make those of us who do not use it but rank below those who do righteous or s-uckers?

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 21:35/09:35PM

Dunno, Mel. I never reported it and don't know if anybody else did. I still like to think that automated techniques will win out in the end.

MazY

16-01-2002, 21:36/09:36PM

Originally posted by Mel
So if a respected search engine like Google doesn't really care if you use hidden text, what does that make those of us who do not use it but rank below those who do righteous or s-uckers?

A mighty fine question and one for which I don't have a firm reply. If, however, I switch to BOOLEAN logic of Yes/No then the obvious answer, assuming it is subject to the same crawling as the rest of us mere mortals, is that clearly it is not a forbidden practise. It can't be. If it was then the site wouldn't be sitting pretty as it is today.

I don't see any other (logical) way of looking at it.

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 21:41/09:41PM

Don't know that either. But I for another did not report it. Never know, maybe no one did or maybe the Googlets just have not gotten around to it yet with all the major stuff going on right now with the database.

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 21:45/09:45PM

You might apply the logic

"It is in the index, so it is not spam".

or

"It is in the index, so it is not detected spam".

Even if it was reported, that doesn't mean it was checked instantly by a human. Who knows how the reporting mechanism works?

MazY

16-01-2002, 21:47/09:47PM

Whether it was reported or not seems a tad immaterial.

Assume that Google do not allow it. Well, that site was subject, I assume, to the same crawl as the rest of us. It's still there. So, either Google can't detect it or it doesn't object enough to discipline the use of it.

It has to be one or the other.

Mel

16-01-2002, 21:49/09:49PM

Right!

So - now we have WPG saying "By all means use hidden links and text", Google in effect saying " I really don't care if you use hidden text" and a respected SEO using hidden text, even though most search engines say they will penalize you if you do use hidden text.

I do not find it necesary to use hidden text, but on the other hand everywhere I go on the search engines I see this chap using hidden text ranking right above me and I can't seem to climb past him (yet).

Alan (and many others, myself among them) says that spam is whatever the search engines say it is. So is hidden text now not spam???

MazY

16-01-2002, 21:50/09:50PM

Originally posted by Alan Perkins
"It is in the index, so it is not detected spam".

Even if it was reported, that doesn't mean it was checked instantly by a human. Who knows how the reporting mechanism works?

I have to be honest - I am really struggling to believe that the reporting is followed up by human eye and hand alone. That would be an absolute admin nightmare requiring so much manpower. Google is, remember, a relatively small company in terms of manpower.

MazY

16-01-2002, 21:58/09:58PM

Originally posted by Mel
I do not find it necesary to use hidden text, but on the other hand everywhere I go on the search engines I see this chap using hidden text ranking right above me and I can't seem to climb past him (yet).

I distinctly remember MarkyMark and I facing exactly the same situation with another two SEO companies. We were subjected to watching them sit on top of us month after month, with methods so blatantly questionable you would have to be blind not to spot them.

However, and I can't speak for Mark here, but the ethical plugging away paid off in the end. No it didn't get us to the top per se, but when Google finally got around to dealing with the problem, sure enough there we were as we were sat directly underneath before!

Though the question still nags at me - how come it took so long when the methods were so blatant. This is another reason why I have trouble believing two issues:

(1.) The use of much manpower at Google.

(2.) The antagonism between Google and the SEOs.

Any Google operative could kill two birds with one stone and run a search for "Search Engine Optimization", (Not sure which search engine they would use. :)) take a look at the top thirty results and strip out any that they "see" cheating. Clearly they don't do this.

So is hidden text now not spam???

Erm, Yes. No. Erm, I don't know!

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 21:59/09:59PM

If the reporting isn't followed up by humans, then it isn't worth reporting. Because if robots couldn't find it on the crawl, they are unlikely to spot it whilst checking up a spam report.

Somebody ought to report one of their own pages and see if Google comes and takes a look at it. :)

Mel, the way I read it, SEs are saying "Do as we say, not as we can't yet detect". That seems a good long-term strategy to me. Others choose not to follow it. That's up to them.

MazY

16-01-2002, 22:02/10:02PM

Originally posted by Alan Perkins
If the reporting isn't followed up by humans, then it isn't worth reporting.

You must concede surely that it would be a human-resource nightmare to try and keep up with them all?

MazY

16-01-2002, 22:05/10:05PM

Originally posted by Alan Perkins
If the reporting isn't followed up by humans, then it isn't worth reporting. Because if robots couldn't find it on the crawl, they are unlikely to spot it whilst checking up a spam report.

That's the point I'm making. (Or trying to) I don't believe it is worth reporting.

Still, it makes for good publicity and feel-good-factor.

Hell, my rankings are going to suffer for this! <Quickly backtracks> Erm, Doug made me write it. That's D.O.U.G H.E.I.L. You can find his details under the zero PR database. :D

Alan Perkins

16-01-2002, 22:06/10:06PM

You must concede surely that it would be a human-resource nightmare to try and keep up with them all?

Absolutely. I would think reports are filtered, counted, prioritised, and queued, i.e. ranked. Could take months to get to one lowly report.

Advisor

16-01-2002, 23:18/11:18PM

It's possible that Google doesn't care about invisible links such as the ones we debated months ago, because they don't effect the results at all. I don't think that an outbound link, visible or not, effects the results, and therefore it's a moot point. Invisible links within your own pages, really don't effect your results at all either, however, they may point to pages that are only there to fool the search engines. I would imagine these would be "looked" at more closely. But, I agree with Maz that nobody is probably actually looking at the bulk of these things.

Jill

ihelpyou

16-01-2002, 23:28/11:28PM

It's fine to say that, until the one update or index where a spam filter is implemented that snuffs out ALL invisible links no matter what kind they are. Same goes for invisible text hidden in negative positioning tags. .. w=-500 h= - 300 or some such nonsense.

I also do think anything like that done, does affect ranks, whether it's simply in a subtle way. Things are done if they appeal to the cause of manipulating the search engines. Hidden links in that way Do affect ranks. Just that no one knows for sure how much. If a hidden link did not affect the engines, why do it? If the link is important enough to code it into the page, why not important enough for a visitor to see it?

As always, swim at your own risk. And please don't cry if you are caught swimming. My new motto. :)

Mel

16-01-2002, 23:40/11:40PM

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JILL
It's possible that Google doesn't care about invisible links such as the ones we debated months ago, because they don't effect the results at all. I don't think that an outbound link, visible or not, effects the results, and therefore it's a moot point.

But in that case Jill the hidden text is a full paragraph, highly optimized, and is used by Google and others as the description of the SERPs and thus is affecting the ranking.

Kal

17-01-2002, 02:50/02:50AM

I'm staying out of this one, but to help things along I just invited a contact at WPG to this thread (not Susan). Enjoying the debate! :cheers:

Alan Perkins

17-01-2002, 06:59/06:59AM

Originally posted by webwhiz
It's possible that Google doesn't care about invisible links such as the ones we debated months ago, because they don't effect the results at all.Anything's possible, but they do specificially state they consider hidden links to be spam and they ask for them to be reported. And, of all search engines, Google's rankings are the MOST likely to be affected by hidden links.

I don't think that an outbound link, visible or not, effects the resultsOne page's outbound links are other pages' inbound links. PageRank is built on this. It must affect the results.

Invisible links within your own pages, really don't effect your results at all eitherThey do, for the same reasons.

I agree with Maz that nobody is probably actually looking at the bulk of these things.I know people are looking at them! They talk at the conferences (The session is "The Spam Police"). I agree they must have a resources problem, so they must prioritise the order they look at reported spam. First come first served would not be a great algo.

Spider Man

17-01-2002, 07:41/07:41AM

I don't think that an outbound link, visible or not, effects the results, and therefore it's a moot point

Besides passing PageRank, contributing to the Expert status of your page (and if you subscribe to hub theory - helping with that).

On the other side of the coin, invisible internal links would be very very very powerful.

So I'd say that it is the sort of thing that G would want the crawler to seek out and detect, rather than responding to individual instances. Keep in mind that if it isn't detected at crawl time this sort of thing has a tendency to disrupt more than just the one site's ranking. Small stones making lots of ripples.

How well they do that and at what level they say "this is okay" in order to avoid penalising legit pages is a different issue. One that I suspect will vary from month to month. What might be worth people keeping in mind if they are thinking of using invisible links is that the harder it is to detect, the more severe the search engine must make the punishment.

For further information you may want to try this link ->

I personally wouldn't do anything that remotely looked like invisible links.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 10:04/10:04AM

Originally posted by Mel
ORIGINALLY POSTED BY JILL

But in that case Jill the hidden text is a full paragraph, highly optimized, and is used by Google and others as the description of the SERPs and thus is affecting the ranking. Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. I was thinking of the invisible link to SEW. The one you are talking about certainly has more implications (although probably not ranking implications...but maybe...)

Jill

edit: oops, wrote that before reading all the posts. Yep, PR can definitely be effected by the outbound links, so I suppose you're right that eventually it all builds up on itself and can come back and have implications to your rankings.

I'm certainly not advocating hidden links or anything! Like Doug says, you're using them at your own risk if you use them!

More coffee for me...

Mel

17-01-2002, 10:16/10:16AM

Hi Jill;

I believe that that paragraph of hidden text, which is set up to be the first thing the spider reads of the body text, has great effect upon the on-page ranking.

Google invariably uses this hidden text as the description for their Serps, and thus is treating it as high on the page body text, no more, no less.

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 10:19/10:19AM

Yep. I'm in total agreement. It is only done to manipulate ranks. This is spam, no matter who is doing the spam. Period.

Boy do I have a lot of stuff to go over with the Google rep at the convention in Boston if I have the slightest chance of talking to him.

Susan Goodson

17-01-2002, 15:50/03:50PM

Whoa!! I just left for a couple days and look what happened :)

Okay I can see everyone's point here, and yes as a rule I usually tell people to avoid hidden links whenever possible as you never know when an engine will pick it up and squish you. However, personally I don't have a problem with them if you are willing to accept whatever risks come of it. And as was pointed out very clearly here search engines quite often say one thing but what they do is quite different, so chances are they may never penalize you for them. I know that this is a middle of the road approach, but I truly agree with Mazy, educate people as to the technique and the risks. However, they must decide for themselves what will work for them and what approach they want to take. (I suspect that Brent would agree with me on that although I cannot speak for him). On the other hand if we had positive proof that the engines could pick out a hidden link and penalize for it I know that we would absolutely not recommend it or tell people how to do it.

I did let Brent know about this thread as you requested Doug.

brentwinters

17-01-2002, 16:51/04:51PM

I was rather surprised when someone told me about the criticism in this forum coming from my mention of hidden links in the January MarketPosition newsletter. Let me try to clarify this issue.

FirstPlace Software, as well as myself personally are fundamentally opposed to spamming the search engines. We work very hard to educate people as to the do’s and don’ts of search engine promotion. I understand your concerns about anything “hidden” but let’s try to keep a good perspective on the issue.

I think it was mentioned or implied that we are promoting “hidden text” as an optimization technique. This is absolutely false. Throughout our newsletters, help files, and the WebPosition Page Critic, we warn of the dangers of using text with the same color text as the background. In fact, the Page Critic will flag your page for a number of potential spam elements such as hidden text and repeating the same keyword over and over. Fortunately, there are many other locations on the page you can include keywords without resorting to the same color text/background technique. We also recommend avoiding the use of cloaking since it can be argued that it is a technique that may push the envelope too far. There are certainly those who favor cloaking, so I’m not looking to get into a debate on that issue, only to point out that we are conservative in our approach to what techniques we recommend, perhaps more conservative than the majority of search engine marketers.

>Absolutely disagree. No reasons at all to hide links.
>Anything a search engine spider can see but a browser
>cannot see is spam IMO.

Doug, if you take the black and white stance that “anything a search engine spider can see but a browser cannot see is spam” then you have not really thought the issue through. If you allow that to be your absolute definition, then anyone using a meta tag, ALT tag, or Noframes tag on their page are also spamming.

After all, meta tags, ALT’s, and various other areas of the page are invisible to the end user but visible to many of the search engines. Do the search engines consider meta tags or ALT tags to be spam? No, not unless you abuse them by targeting keywords that don’t apply to your page’s content.

Google’s help page says do not “Write text or create links that can be seen by search engines but not by visitors to your site.” Again, you must apply some common sense to that along with everything a search engine says. Taken literally, you could argue that if you included a meta tag on your page, that Google does not like that since its invisible to the user. Most experts know that the statement does not really apply to all hidden text. Most experts also know that including a hidden image link, even on Google, is unlikely to get you banned, yet in reality can help the spider find important pages.

Years ago, I never bothered to mention the hidden link technique. However, many people had optimized one page, for example, to satisfy AltaVista’s requirements, and one page to satisfy HotBot. They didn’t want to add links to both pages for all visitors to see and travel to when one link on the home page was sufficient. Unfortunately, engines became lazy about spidering deep into a Web site. If the link was not near the top of the tree, it was ignored. In other cases, engines were known to ignore or penalize pages that you submitted directly rather than allowing it to follow it via links from the home page. People were asking for a solution, so, we posted the www.webposition.com/hiddenlinks.htm article as a method to consider since it was and still is used successfully by many SEO firms.

Since some people consider ANYTHING hidden a gray area, you’ll notice in the article that both sides of the coin are mentioned. The viewpoint that many use the technique successfully is mentioned, while the viewpoint that those on the very conservative wing prefer to avoid the technique to be absolutely safe is also cited. Our recommendation is and always has been to use visible links whenever possible. If that won’t work for your situation, here are some options and the risk factors.

A large part of our job is to educate people on how the search engines work and what they do and do not want to see. We try to recommend against any techniques that are clearly bad for the search engines or for the end user. However, hidden links are often needed to provide a way for the spider to more easily find pages that are important, that it might otherwise overlook. If you have a way to design your site to avoid them, then by all means, use visible links. However, they should not be considered spam in my opinion unless abused. For example, including keywords in hidden link text that did not apply to your Web site would be spamming for sure.

Including hidden keywords in the link text could be argued as being a gray area and I believe is what Google is really concerned about, particularly if the keywords are not relevant. Simply including an image link that does not include keywords in the hypertext area is of much less concern since it’s just a navigation aid rather than a method to unfairly influence rankings for a keyword. I would find it difficult to argue that hidden image links are unethical. However, ultimately, that’s your decision to make.

In our defense, the article DOES say that the hidden text method is not recommended: “Some search engine marketers believe that certain search engines are now able to detect color codes that are too similar to each other and may penalize (or ban) pages or sites for using this technique. Therefore, it's recommended you use visible links whenever possible, or use the hidden image method which is generally considered a safer method so long as you do not specify the size of the image on the page.”

If the hiddenlinks article is being viewed by most as promoting spam (not our intention), then I’d consider removing the last half of hiddenlinks.htm article that gives the example of hidden text links. In regard to hidden image links for the purpose of the spider finding pages easier, people should be educated and allowed to make their own choice. If we learn that people are commonly being banned for that, then we'll issue a stronger warning. My bet is that Google is more concerned about keyword abuse in links.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 16:58/04:58PM

Well said, Brent!

:cheers:

Jill

OptWizard

17-01-2002, 17:02/05:02PM

WOW..great post Brent..:thumb:

WebSavvy

17-01-2002, 17:05/05:05PM

Brent, you did a beautiful and intelligent presentation of the facts.

:cheers:

Alan Perkins

17-01-2002, 17:16/05:16PM

Welcome Brent :hi: and Hi Susan

Many thanks for making your position clearer.

FirstPlace Software, as well as myself personally are fundamentally opposed to spamming the search engines
I'm glad we're agreed on that. It seems we are not fundamentally agreed on what spam actually is though.

We've spent ages on this forum debating what spam is, but one thing we mostly agree on is that if a search engine says it is spam, it is spam. The SEs say that hidden links are spam, so they are spam. No engine says "hidden text links are spam, but hidden image links are OK", so why do you think this is the case?

if you take the black and white stance that “anything a search engine spider can see but a browser cannot see is spam” then you have not really thought the issue through.I take that stance (for <BODY> content, and "human" instead of "browser") and I have thought the issue through and through.

If you allow that to be your absolute definition, then anyone using a meta tag, ALT tag, or Noframes tag on their page are also spamming.Not at all. They can be used for spamming, it's true. But they weren't designed for spamming. If they are used for the purpose they were designed for, it's not spamming.

MazY

17-01-2002, 18:04/06:04PM

Nice post, Brent.

I can tell you that to try and continue the case here will be akin to banging your head up against a wall until it bleeds. (Which I think is wrong but there you go.)

As you may have spotted there are some very strong and often, in my opinion, knee-jerk reactions to "spam" and its definitions.

Once again, nice post...

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 18:34/06:34PM

Welcome to the forums Brent! :hi:

As much as I do respect you, I have to strongly disagree with you thinking it is okay to teach and show people that "image" links that are invisible can be gotten away if. This is what I object to.

I am in complete agreement with Alan on this issue as it is very obvious others in here will not speak how they think about spam.

Also, obviously, I think that serving spiders different "body" content than the browser is spam. That includes all hidden image links and ANYthing else that is hidden from the browser. Does Not include anything in the <head> section. Spam is spam Brent. The search engines (Google) for one, clearly state on the site that hidden links are spam. Why do you feel that a hidden image link is somehow less spam? And why do you feel a user of this technique might just get away with it?

This is what I mean.

And Maz, no knee-jerk reaction from me at all about this. I have clearly stated my opinions from the very first post. :)

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 18:43/06:43PM

Per Susan:
And as was pointed out very clearly here search engines quite often say one thing but what they do is quite different, so chances are they may never penalize you for them.
Susan, does that make it right? Does anyone really believe the search engines will tell us exactly how they view things from month to month? Obviously not. Can they get all the spam out of the indexes every month? No they cannot.

If a webmaster/SEO is doing something only to manipulate ranks and this 'something' does not have another use other than manipulating ranks, it is spam.

For what purpose is a hidden link used for?

Hope

17-01-2002, 19:14/07:14PM

I had intended to stay out of this discussion, but I have to add my $0.02.

Google’s help page says do not “Write text or create links that can be seen by search engines but not by visitors to your site.”

If this doesn't say what spam is, than I am not sure any search engine will ever be able to tell us clearly enough what they define as spam.

FirstPlace Software, as well as myself personally are fundamentally opposed to spamming the search engines. We work very hard to educate people as to the do’s and don’ts of search engine promotion.

If this is really how you feel, then why are you giving information on how to spam Google?

I understand that you are trying to assist webmasters who are NOT professional SEO. You are trying to help the little guy out. I respect that. I cannot respect the advice your are giving.

You might as well tell everyone to use font size -5 in the same color as the backgroud to add their keywords 500 times. Then in the next sentence state that there may be some search engines that don't like it. It is the same thing. There is no difference.

Google tells you don't do it. Google calls this spam. Why would any respectable company tell people it is ok to spam, but there could be some problems.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 19:14/07:14PM

For what purpose is a hidden link used for? I believe Brent already addressed that in his post.

J

Advisor

17-01-2002, 19:19/07:19PM

If this is really how you feel, then why are you giving information on how to spam Google? There's the key...giving information. It's not up to Brent what people do with the information.

Using the same logic, I could be accused (and so could Doug) of giving information on how to Spam Yahoo when we talk about how all you have to do is buy a keyword rich domain and create a company with the same name.

Does Doug condone spam when he says this? Do I? We're giving information just as I believe Brent gave information. He also told of the risks involved, and never said, "you should go out and do this."

Jill

MazY

17-01-2002, 19:25/07:25PM

Originally posted by ihelpyou
I have to strongly disagree with you thinking it is okay to teach and show people that "image" links that are invisible can be gotten away if. This is what I object to.

So, logically speaking then, you diagree with the truth?

Right, I'm going to go for it as this illogical crusade against spam is really starting to get irritating now... 'scuse me peeps...

The fact, note I wrote fact not emotional opinion, is that nothing in the article is incorrect. The article has stated that this method will work. Clearly, going by some of the current indexes, it does. Now, if you strongly disagree with this fact, fine.

But, and it is a big but, your disagreement is not with Brent or with WPG or indeed Susan. They are simply the messengers. Your disagreement is with the search engines. Take it up with them if you feel that passionately about it. Why aren't you doing that? Does the weight of your convictions not carry as far as your verbal protest?

WPG's role is, I assume, (feel free to correct me Brent, Susan) is to educate. Note, educate, not dictate on what the various methods available are to those wishing to improve their rankings. You cannot educate a single soul if you run away from fact simply because you don't like the fact that is presented. That is both illogical and frankly childish.

While I would not use the method myself, I most certainly would not discourage a single soul from doing so. Why? Because that is their choice. Owning a forum does not give the mightier than thou right to dictate to those that wish to exercise their God-given right to experiment. Or indeed to those who wish to write and educate on those experiments!

You, as a reader and an adult, have an option when reading something you disagree with. Either ignore it or use it. Your option is not to scare-monger others simply because your own beliefs do not make room for experimentation and education!

Your responsiblity as the owner of a forum which deals primarily with search engine rankings is to present the facts to the best of your ability to the enquiring minds who want and need factual answers, not emotionally-charged and knee-jerk reaction!

If the whole world ran on such "closed-mind" ethics, we would still be tearing at raw meat with flint. Thankfully it doesn't.

Now, I shall leave this thread because I really cannot abide to read one more mightier-than-thou anti-spam campaign that is borne simply from a closed mind!

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 19:27/07:27PM

Maybe I missed it then. This is one thing posted:
In our defense, the article DOES say that the hidden text method is not recommended: “Some search engine marketers believe that certain search engines are now able to detect color codes that are too similar to each other and may penalize (or ban) pages or sites for using this technique. Therefore, it's recommended you use visible links whenever possible, or use the hidden image method which is generally considered a safer method so long as you do not specify the size of the image on the page.”
The only answer to my question of "what is the purpose of a hidden link" should be "to manipulate the search engines. No other reason to have one.

The above is telling everyone (recommended) you use hidden image links instead, and also that you should not specify the size of the image.

Another question I have is why should you not specify the size of the image? The answer is, ... because you might be able to get away with this tactic. In other words, you can use the hidden image to hide the link to 'trick' the search engine spiders.

The real big problem is there are plenty of SEO's out there who say everything and anything to try to justify why they do things, including why they use hidden links. There are also many newsletters out there telling everyone the very best ways to spam the search engines. There are not enough of people out there trying to work with the search engines and not against them.

I am a little guy compared to big WPG. I am extremely small potatoes. If someone like me is trying to work with the engines and work for the new webmaster who has no clue, and then there are the big people working against the engines and telling the newbie this and that and how to "LESS" spam, who is going to make the greater impression?

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 19:31/07:31PM

Thank you MazY. I appreciate that.

And Jill, that is an entirely different situation. You can buy a domain name for many more reasons than the search engines.

There is no other reason to hide a link.

You all have missed my points. Alan seems to be the one getting it.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 19:38/07:38PM

And Jill, that is an entirely different situation. You can buy a domain name for many more reasons than the search engines. But, Doug, you yourself call the Yahoo thing spamming Yahoo. At least I could have sworn you've called it that. Yet you openly have talked about how that works. In fact, after I wrote about it in RankWrite, I had someone call me thanking me for telling them how to spam Yahoo! Obviously, that was not my intention, but that's how people take it. I would never recommend people use that technique, just talked about it. It's not up to me, or you, or Brent, or anyone else to decide what tricks others should use or not use. That's for their own moral compass to decide. By the same token, Danny shouldn't invite cloakers to speak at conferences either. But he does because people want to be informed. Is Danny a spammer? Is he a cloaker? Does he condone cloaking? I believe he simply believes in providing as much information as possible on the subject of search engines and optimization.

Jill

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 19:49/07:49PM

That is correct. Again, my points are not sinking in. I know I am not as great a writer as many of you and I guess I cannot write down points clear enough.

Sorry about that.

I am thinking about the time back when in building a site for the first time. So much stuff out there and sooo much wrong stuff that burnt badly, Including when my site was banned by AltaVista back in their heyday. I was told a certain tactic would work, so I used it. I was very niave and new to this engine stuff and did not know right from wrong. Nor did I realize you could get banned from any engine. Nor did I know that what I did was a trick. This is what I am trying to explain. There are plenty of "me's back then" right now on the net. These new people do not have any knowledge about what might be wrong or right. It could be that the very first thing they learn is about how to spam. They also might not hear others saying you should not spam. It's not a case of their choice, necessarily, but a case of them simply not in the know yet.

I have nothing more to say on this issue tonight.

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 20:19/08:19PM

OOPS. One more point. :D

This whole issue is looked at by me as a debate in an open forum. This is quite different than a web site putting up a page and letting viewers know about lesser ways of spam.

At least in here, a viewer can see the debate and then make a "choice". This is Not any "mightier than thou" thing at all. It's simply a debate. I could not have let that article go without some debate on the issue. A new webmaster viewing that page does not have that priviledge of watching different views like viewers in here do. When someone post something that I do not agree with, not only does the viewer get to see the posters opinion, but he can see my rebuttal as well.

Brent and WPG have posted their opinion on this matter. So has Mazy, Jill, Mel, Alan and others. This is simply great! My viewers get to see all our opinions about the subject, and Only then can they make that "choice" that was brought up in a post just above. With the WPG view put up on their site, no debate takes place, and the viewer does not see other opinions.

Sure, if I would write about spam on my site, which I do, and if I would tell my clients directly about spam, which I do, I also tell them Not to do it. I don't tell them to do something else because it is less spam or because there is less chance of being caught. This is what I would have done in that article. It simply looks like the article is recommending a lesser form of spam, and there is no way anyone can debate it like there is in forums such as this.

You have to agree a forum is very different than something put up on a web page?

Hopefully, this has cleared things up a little.

brentwinters

17-01-2002, 20:21/08:21PM

From Doug:
>For what purpose is a hidden link used for?

I have the feeling I will wish I'd followed MazY's advice, but I will respond to this question. If you have hundreds of pages on your Web site, some of those pages may be very important to your site, but they may also be buried a number of levels deep. This was the scenario mentioned in the newsletter when I directed people to the hiddenlinks article.

A person may hear the advice of "let the spider find the page on its own" since that can improve your rankings, and tends to keep your page indexed more consistently. It is also the advice given by many of the engines. However, some engines are very bad about spidering down many levels.

Google is admittedly better than other engines at crawling, but that doesn't help you much in getting deep pages indexed on the other engines. So, sometimes people need to give the spider a more direct path to key pages to improve the chances that it will be indexed. However, adding that link to the menu of their home page may not be the best user-interface decision.

Therefore, each Webmaster must in this scenario choose what is more important to them. The navigation experience to the end user or blindly following a "don't" listed on one of Google's FAQ pages. Hidden image links may be perfectly acceptable to other search engines. Many techniques are often declared as fine by one engine and not fine by another. Who is right in this scenario?

One engine says "Don't do this." Another engine says "That's fine." If anyone says "don't" no matter how silly or impractical it might be, then do you blindly call it spam and avoid it no matter what, even if you believe its not a rule that is enforced?

What if a more obscure engine like johnssearchferret.com says "don't do this," but they don't enforce the rule, and everybody else says it's fine, do you still call it spam, or do you make a judgement call?

I understand where you're coming from Doug. That's why I personally don't like the concept of cloaking. It effectively wrestles all control of how to rank a page away from the search engine. The search engines are also more vocal against it than other techniques like hidden images. Cloaking proponents feel that the user's experience outweighs the disadvantages of cloaking. That's their choice, so I try not to beat them over with a stick about it.

Doug, I respect your viewpoint, particularly about hiding keywords in text links. I may even remove that example in the article since as a rule I don't like to do anything to encourage or to enable people to do something they shouldn't.

Unlike many SEO companies out there, we do our best to weigh the concerns of the search engines, with the concerns of the Web surfer, along with the concerns of the search engine marketer. However, when it comes right down to it, we must be an advocate for search engine marketer first. People read our newsletters and buy our product because they want to improve their rankings. I'm assuming that's what most of the people in this forum want to do. Therefore, if we did nothing but repeat what was on the FAQ page of each search engine, we wouldn't really be helping our subscribers and customers in a PRACTICAL sense.

In summary, our policy is to encourage people to create search engine friendly pages, tempered with practical considerations to the search engine marketer. We try to steer people away from techniques that are clearly unethical, and caution people about gray areas that are debateable. Determining the difference between the two is a gray area in itself. Rarely (if ever) is everything I write going to be agreed upon by everyone, on all sides of the fence. Such is the reality of life I guess.

If anything I said lights a fire under you, sit back, relax, and have a good drink. We're all friends, so cheers!

:cheers:

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 20:29/08:29PM

Thanks for the post Brent! Some good points made and acknowledged!

I also understand where you are coming from. Very, very clearly. Hopefully my post above will explain things a little better from my viewpoint.

Regarding your statement of pages that are real deep and hard to find. What I tell clients is to simply put a "site map" link on their front page that is visible. It does not take up much space and is easily implemented. On this page you put any visible links you wish. This way the spiders will find that site map page easily and then find any other pages you wish it to find. Everyone is satisfied and there is no spamming involved. :)

Advisor

17-01-2002, 20:41/08:41PM

I have nothing more to say on this issue tonight. LOL...knew you couldn't keep quiet!

Jill

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 20:57/08:57PM

LOL. Yep.

But do you see more clearly what I am saying?

oh, ... that 'site map' link does not have to be on the front page, but can be on any page you wish that is spidered with no problem. You see, there are many work arounds to getting deep pages spidered. None of them have to do with hidden links.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 21:00/09:00PM

But do you see more clearly what I am saying? I've seen it clearly all along, my dear. I just don't happen to agree with you!

Jill

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 21:04/09:04PM

Okay. That is perfectly fine then.

So you must believe that using hidden links is less spam or that posting as such on a web page is not impressionable to a newbie who views it? You see, there is no debate involved with a web page. Plenty of debate involved with a forum, and the newbie can make a personal choice.

hey Jill, I'm finding it hard to know what exactly it is that you disagree with?

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 21:16/09:16PM

Okay. Here is the very first sentence of that article:
There are many reasons a Webmaster may wish to hide a link from the end user but allow a search engine to find it.
I am truly confused about why that might be true? This is the whole basis for my side of the debate. Anything you hide in the body of a page from an end user, but wish a search engine to find, is spam. We have gone over this same debate in the thread on Alan's white paper and I thought we all agreed to this.

The whole first paragraph in the article is saying the reasons one may want to hide links. I contend that there are no good reasons. That's all.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 21:16/09:16PM

hey Jill, I'm finding it hard to know what exactly it is that you disagree with? I disagree with you saying that Brent should not have posted in his newsletter and on his site, information about invisible links.

J

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 21:23/09:23PM

Okay. Here is my answer from an earlier post and what is behind my reasoning about that:
This whole issue is looked at by me as a debate in an open forum. This is quite different than a web site putting up a page and letting viewers know about lesser ways of spam.

At least in here, a viewer can see the debate and then make a "choice". This is Not any "mightier than thou" thing at all. It's simply a debate. I could not have let that article go without some debate on the issue. A new webmaster viewing that page does not have that priviledge of watching different views like viewers in here do. When someone post something that I do not agree with, not only does the viewer get to see the posters opinion, but he can see my rebuttal as well.
I should also add that the same thing usually works like a debate with a speaker who is talking about cloaking or hidden links. I don't think he/she would finish up the speech by saying something like, "but if you do this "lesser form of cloaking". I also think you have back and forth debate and discussion after a speech. Again, quite different from writing on a web page where no one can debate and where newbie's will read with no other views.

Mel

17-01-2002, 21:24/09:24PM

Ah Errr Ahem....

Should that be INvisible links jill?

Advisor

17-01-2002, 21:27/09:27PM

I'm sorry, Doug, but you don't have the right, in my opinion, to tell others what they can and can't post on their Web site or their newsletter. That's all I'm saying. The issue of whether or not he's telling people how to spam or not is another whole story. I just believe that people have the right to write what they want, unless it's dangerous or like child porn or something. I just don't really believe much in censorship, I guess.

J

Advisor

17-01-2002, 21:29/09:29PM

Originally posted by Mel
Ah Errr Ahem....

Should that be INvisible links jill? Yep! Thanks, and all fixed. (Hard to type...my son was on my lap!)

J

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 21:36/09:36PM

Point taken.

I simply feel like a big company should have some responsibility about what they are conveying to a new webmaster. That's all. They and you and anyone has the right to publish anything they wish. I simply would have expected more of a "teaching" article about hidden links that ended up with something like "please do not do it" or "we do not recommend it", instead of simply stating the ways to get away with using hidden links and not telling the viewer there are other alternatives to them.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 21:44/09:44PM

I simply feel like a big company should have some responsibility about what they are conveying to a new webmaster. And you have a right to those feelings. :love:

Which is why you do exactly that with these forums and your clients. That's why I always say that people have to do their research to decide what's right and wrong for them. Like I said in another thread, those that don't do their research, deserve what they get!

J

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 21:48/09:48PM

Yep. :) And these forums show all the different views and opinions as well, which gives the viewer lots of information he/she needs to make a choice.

Advisor

17-01-2002, 21:54/09:54PM

Maybe Brent can add a link to this thread. Then everyone can be :happy:!

Now, you see, children, how people can have a mature discussion and debate without flying off the handle, or saying, "I'm never ever, ever, gonna post here, ever, ever again!" :scattered

Jill :green:

WebSavvy

17-01-2002, 22:00/10:00PM

I'm on the fence with Jill on this one. Censorship in any form is wrong. People have a right to their opinions and they have a right to express them, in support of, or in adversity to, the opinions of anyone else. That's what makes this world we live in so extremely diverse and interesting.

If everyone thought or acted alike this would indeed be a very boring world. Great thoughts are that catalyst which lend aspiration to lead man in a better direction than he's traveled in the past and to greater realities in his future than his dreams could ever invoke.

However Doug, I see valid points in your philosophy as well.

Just my 2 cents worth.

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 22:07/10:07PM

You are very, very right Jill.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with debating in a forum. There is also nothing wrong with Strongly disagreeing in a forum. All of it certainly helps both 'guests' and 'members' alike.

You just can't be a sensitive person that takes things personally cause we are all in this stuff together. Just that we all have our own opinions and wish to express them.

I know sometimes what I may write comes off as rude or something, but I do mean well and simply trying to make sure the other side of topics are heard. Nothing I write is inflamatory or personal, simply my strong opinions. Lord knows I have some and am not afraid to express them. :) And I freely welcome strong opinions against my views.

ihelpyou

17-01-2002, 22:10/10:10PM

Yep Savvy1, I certainly agree completely with that.

Mel

18-01-2002, 00:15/12:15AM

I agree that the purpose of these forums is to help the members learn enough to be able to make thier own informed decisions.

I do not happen to agree with Brents suggesting that hidden links, either images or text should be considered, but I do agree that he has a right to his opinion.

I would have thought that WPG would have been more circumspect, however.

Alan Perkins

18-01-2002, 05:48/05:48AM

Brent said
If anything I said lights a fire under you, sit back, relax, and have a good drink. We're all friends, so cheers!No problems, no flames. We're all friends here to learn. And if you are in Boston, we will have a beer. :cheers:

Three issues I'd like to raise in this post: rights, responsibilities and facts.

Rights

Brent has every right to publish whatever he wants in his newsletter. We have every right to debate it here. No question about that.

Responsibilites

If a newbie Webmaster follows the advice in Brent's newsletter, and ultimately suffers for it, whose responsibility is it? IMO, the way the newsletter currently is, it would be partly Brent's responsibility. Others may disagree, but I think Brent is in a position of responsibilty. I would have no problem at all with the newsletter if it said in a "WARNING" box at the top:

Some of the techniques described in this newsletter are regarded by some search engines as spam. If you implement them you may be penalised now or at some point in the future. Proceed at your own risk.

In other words, IMO the warnings in the newsletter are not strong enough. It does not use the word "spam" anywhere, for example.

Facts

Let's just talk about Google here. Three facts:

1) Google says invisible links are spam.
2) If Google doesn't detect invisible links, those links will affect PageRank (and other link-based ranking algorithms)
3) Invisible links are detectable.

What's unknown is whether Google is detecting invisible links, or penalising them, now or will do in future.

ihelpyou

18-01-2002, 10:41/10:41AM

I am not sure why some feel I am censoring? I thought censoring was done by someone with authority over a publisher or something? And then proceed to delete parts of it? I'm just a little guy who has zero control of anything except my own little space. :) All I am doing is disagreeing with the article and brought it up for debate in my forums.

This is what we all do on a daily basis. We debate everything and anything, even if it includes words or content or anything else on another web site. Just because it is WPG does not exclude them from a debate. Actually, because it is them, they should be more accountable for anything they write, as being well-known and big and having lots of new webmasters finding them, does mean they do have a certain amount of responsibility to the webmaster community in general.

If I had not brought up the article, would anyone have? I know they probably received a few emails about it, but how would you debate it if not in a forum?

Advisor

18-01-2002, 10:51/10:51AM

Originally posted by ihelpyou
I am not sure why some feel I am censoring? I thought censoring was done by someone with authority over a publisher or something? And then proceed to delete parts of it? I'm just a little guy who has zero control of anything except my own little space. :) All I am doing is disagreeing with the article and brought it up for debate in my forums. Maybe because you said:Why in the heck?? What the heck? Why? I am not happy this info is going out to your 430,000 newsletter Sounds like you were saying they shouldn't have sent it out. Or, you would have liked to censor it.

Now, had you said something like, "What do you all think about telling people about using hidden links in their web sites, with no real caveat about how it is spam," etc., etc., then that would have been a slightly different debate. I think it was as heated as it was because of the way you worded your original few posts. :)

Jill

ihelpyou

18-01-2002, 11:01/11:01AM

That's right. I was not happy about it at all. As was said earlier, there was not a good warning involved with the article. It was troubling to me. Not censoring. I am disagreeing with it. And I proceeded to bring it up for debate.

WPG is very entitled to their opinion about what is spam and what is not spam:
Brent said:
Including hidden keywords in the link text could be argued as being a gray area and I believe is what Google is really concerned about, particularly if the keywords are not relevant. Simply including an image link that does not include keywords in the hypertext area is of much less concern since it’s just a navigation aid rather than a method to unfairly influence rankings for a keyword. I would find it difficult to argue that hidden image links are unethical. However, ultimately, that’s your decision to make.
That is troubling. If we all simply did this, how many doorways not connected to a web site would be in the index? Where would it end? To say this does not influence ranks is simply not right. It does influence ranks in a big way. You could put hidden links leading to a very high PageRank page on another web site if all of this was perfectly fine. There are many ways all sites could abuse the hidden link issue if left untouched. Where is the line drawn?

How is a hidden image link with no keywords "much less concern" than another hidden image link? Neither one can be seen by the browser. I did not know there was such a thing as less spam?
Simply including an image link that does not include keywords in the hypertext area is of much less concern since it’s just a navigation aid rather than a method to unfairly influence rankings for a keyword.
I can think of quite a few ways this tactic would influence ranks in a big way. That statement simply is not true.