Invisible text frowned upon by Google? Even get you banned?

[Trent Boswell]

I would like to use a few sentences of invisible text at the bottom of my page. This text would be the same color as the background, so it would be invisible.

I heard Google may ban you if you do this with keywords, but I would be using the same text content that's embedded in my flash content. I would like to do this because Google doesn't read my flash text.

Anyone know if Google looks at this as no-no? Will they ban me?

Thanks in advance for anyone's help.

 

[benjamin.morgan]

If it is just the same color as the background you could still highlight it, it wouldn't count as invisible. If you want it to be completely invisible use display:none; or visibility:hidden; just don't pour loads and loads of content.

 

[PixelPusher]

If it is just the same color as the background you could still highlight it, it wouldn't count as invisible. If you want it to be completely invisible use display:none; or visibility:hidden; just don't pour loads and loads of content.

Incorrect. Having text the same color as it's parents background is called "ghosting" and you can be penalized for it. My suggestion if you really need to do this is notate the ranking of your site prior to implementing, and compare that to a couple months after.

Keep in mind, if you do get flagged, and then remove the ghosted text, it will take some time to get back to where you were before you implemented it.

 

[n1c0_ds]

You seem to have a very wrong conception of search engines optimization. What you want to do has been severely penalized by search engines for a few years. Every month, Google is improving its algorythm to mess with people who are trying to cheat the search engines.

If you want to rank for these keywords, put relevant content on your site and carefully build some links. The first rule of SEO is not to be a jerk. I got to number one on Google within 6 months by playing it legit, and so should you.

 

[Frank]

While I think that people should indeed play it legit and not put crap on the web, I find it hard to believe that bots can detect that texts have been made invisible.

I would think that they can only detect massive two-way cross-site linking, which is often done by makers of crappy sites. After which a Google staff member can investigate personally and then see the hidden text.

For anything other than that, I would like to see the proof.

 

[MarkR]

While I think that people should indeed play it legit and not put crap on the web, I find it hard to believe that bots can detect that texts have been made invisible.

I would think that they can only detect massive two-way cross-site linking, which is often done by makers of crappy sites. After which a Google staff member can investigate personally and then see the hidden text.

For anything other than that, I would like to see the proof.

It would actually be very easy to detect if text has the same colour as it's background. I could sit here and write a php script to do that in about 20 minutes.

I wouldn't underestimate the amount of effort search engines pour into this, and for the sake of a few lines of text which will probably make no difference is it even worth being banned?

 

[pinkspider]

When using headers containing the company logo which are purely images, I often put a negative text-indent (about -3000px) for SEO purposes but generally only what is in the image anyway. Is this frowned upon too?

 

[Brian Angel]

When using headers containing the company logo which are purely images, I often put a negative text-indent (about -3000px) for SEO purposes but generally only what is in the image anyway. Is this frowned upon too?

You can look at 100 diffrent places regarding this and get 50 diffrent answers so the bottom line is.. who knows.

 

[Phreaddee]

The best way around this would be to ditch the flash. Write semantic markup and use jquery to create the desired animation/effect the flash currently does...
Nicholas is spot on tho. Play the game smart and fair and youll get the results.
Even a quick run through a validator will bring up a warning of same background/color, so I cant see how a search engine wouldnt have the same capability...
These sort of "workarounds" shouldnt even come into your head. If they do then youve not built your site adequately in the first place.

Flash has its uses...i just think the web isnt one of them!

 

[Frank]

It would actually be very easy to detect if text has the same colour as it's background. I could sit here and write a php script to do that in about 20 minutes.

OK, but there are several methods to make text invisible -- negative indent, negative margin, display:none, visibility:hidden, camouflage, etc. All these methods are used in legit ways as well. Google cannot ban all those sites, because all sites with multi-level menus would then have to be banned -- the sub levels are not displayed until hover.