Google’s policy on hidden text and its effect on rankings is fairly well known, and has been for a long time. Still, many websites continue to test Google’s search algorithms by finding new ways to ‘hide’ text within their page.

The appeal of hidden text is understandable. While keyword saturation helps to boost your appeal to search engines, the casual viewer of your page is likely to get tired of seeing the same terms repeated over and over and it decreases the usability of the site.

Having hidden text, however, means a big risk that your site will be deemed ‘untrustworthy’ by Google and other engines. Too many links on each page can also put your site at risk. Google’s official word is that anything that a search engine can see but a human visitor cannot is suspect, and may result in your site being removed from Google completely.

Google’s official stand

The search engine’s official stand is that certain things are out. Some of these are obvious: white text on a white background, text behind an image and setting font size to zero are all obviously devious.

It’s difficult to know where Google stands on specific uses of hidden text and links. Some companies have managed to successfully appeal a removal from the Google index. Susan Moskwa, a member of the support team at the Webmaster Central Google Groups, has stated that if you have replaced text with an image of the same text in order to improve user visual experience, you haven’t done anything wrong. However, using the Fehrer Image Replacement Technique, which is essentially the same thing, could prompt a web-bot to kick you off the index. If you do have hidden text, it’s best to consult an expert search engine optimisation company such as SEO Consult for advice.

What to do? Although the result might be the same, your intention when working these effects into your website counts. Hiding something within your website solely because you think a search engine will eat it up is really not the best thing to do. Although every website openly courts Google with search engine optimisation and content management to help in its internet marketing, the point is that all of these tricks are in the open for viewers to see as well.

Not everything hidden is seen as bad, and Google does acknowledge that some sites with Flash plugins, JavaScript and some types of images are not intentionally breaking the rules. Google recommends that you review your site for hidden text and links, and remove anything that is not easily viewable by a human visitor. Again, not exactly crystal clear (what about mouseovers?) but they do provide the best guideline: if you’ve hidden something because it’s meant only for a search engine, you are in the wrong and need to review your search engine optimisation approach.

Hiding text is highly likely to get your website banned from Google’s index completely and to reverse this is difficult, so be sure to conduct your internet marketing in conjunction with advice from a professional company such as SEO Consult.

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