Fool google with CSS!

[Webinsane]

The common mistake of many designers is that they think that Google is some kind of super power scanner with magical powers to detect everything.


I think that with css you can play with Google all night long. Maybe in future it will have some kind of detection system but for now Google indexes all my invisible css pages. For example google could indexed my invisible list:

<li id="products" title="script"><a href="script">Script</a>

  <ul>
<li id="instant" title="update website through web browser"><a href="script/update-website-browser.php">Update Website through Web Browser</a></li>

<li id="supersitemap" title="generate sitemap script"><a href="script/generate-sitemap-script.php">Generate SiteMap Script</a></li>

<li id="addcomment" title="add a comment script"><a href="script/add-a-comment-script.php">Add a Comment Script</a></li>

<li id="high" title="search engine highlighter"><a href="script/search-engine-highlighter.php">Search Engine Highlighter</a></li>

</ul>

Then in css you can assign image to css ID and that image of course can be white or any non visible image. Google had no clue. Also anchor text using this kind of css can be as long as we want and not been seen by your visitors :-p


However I was little bit scared to assign invisible header (h2) to all my pages because on some pages I don't want text to be seen.

h2 		{
font-family:verdana, geneva, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; 
font-size: 12px;
font-style: normal; 
line-height: 10px;  
color: #fff;
}

Of course my background is white, not the background of the actual page, but bg of again another css content area. Is it possible for Google to detect this? I see they have no clue about detecting css images because google has no clue where image is because it is called from css file, but simple h2 css code hmm maybe I am pushing it here I cant have my page banned :-)


I know that all this will make enormous css file like mine but that is the price I can deal with.


Any input would be nice...thanks

[aspen]

Then a competitor reports you for invisible text and google bans your site.

[stymiee]

You should have known this was a bad idea once you typed in your tile, "Fool Google..."

[Webinsane]

Yes I know that. I am just asking if google has any way of detecting invisible header <h2>.



@stymiee: You don't think there are some very large corporate websites that use this kind of strategy? You ever serached for something then having hard time finding actual word you searched? Bad idea was that I asked this question here :-)

[stymiee]

@stymiee: You don't think there are some very large corporate websites that use this kind of strategy? You ever serached for something then having hard time finding actual word you searched? Bad idea was that I asked this question here :-)

If they jump off of a bridge will you do that, too?

[Webinsane]

Well thanks for your help. You are right I might have to much to lose doing this.

You think that by following the rules always you can achieve excellent results? After all Google just pretends to be nice :-)

[stymiee]

Sure you can. You just need ot be patient. We all want great results and fast but those days are long gone thanks to spammers and such. But any site that is optimized with great content will rise to the top (with some work of course).

[Webinsane]

I really spend a lot of times doing seo and I like to cover every little detail. That is why I wanted to try some invisible stuff mostly because I wanted my index page to get some keywords.

I just had first index by Google on my new site and I can say I had great results but of course mostly my index page was receving good rank, but I will have to wait :-)


Thanks for your help guys

[r937]

That is why I wanted to try some invisible stuff mostly because I wanted my index page to get some keywords.

why do they have to be invisible? why don't you actually just put your keywords onto your index page? if the page is supposed to be about such-and-such, why would you want to hide the such-and-such words? this is exactly the approach that spammers take, and if you are found out, google might just ban you completely

[mcsolas]

You should have known this was a bad idea once you typed in your tile, "Fool Google..."

Shhhhh!!

Just delete the thread real quick and maybe they wont notice.

[guk6kk]

well...there are some attributes in css to hide layers. which i dont remember the code now. you can also hide keywords in those layers and hide it behind the main layer.

[stymiee]

well...there are some attributes in css to hide layers. which i dont remember the code now. you can also hide keywords in those layers and hide it behind the main layer.

Didn't we just go over why we shouldn't be doing this?

[KLB]

Sure you can. You just need ot be patient. We all want great results and fast but those days are long gone thanks to spammers and such. But any site that is optimized with great content will rise to the top (with some work of course).

Exactly! I use no SEO tricks that Google or any other search engine would take offense to if one of their employees reviewed my source code, yet my sites typically do very good in search engines.

If you want to use H2 tags etc. for search engines, why not also use them for users? I make heavy use of Hx tags to add proper document structure to my pages, which help make my pages more readable by human users and at the same time help provide emphasis to key phrases for search engines. Hiding text that is designed only to be visible by search engines is cloaking and cloaking is bad. There is no way around this.

[platinum]

If you want good results, and want to include certain keywords/phrases on a page - then write some content, which has them all in it!

[Webinsane]

Why is so hard to understand that sometimes we can't just show text on top of the page with header tags on index page.

I know I know about content and good optimizing but you are wrong I would be ranked higher with my hidden text but then it is too risky to do it so lets just forget about it.

Google has no clue what you doing especially if you use tricky css, but your competitor will definitely examine you site and report you.

So what I have learned from my stoned post?


It is not worth it ... no no no

[lo0ol]

If you want to use H2 tags etc. for search engines, why not also use them for users? I make heavy use of Hx tags to add proper document structure to my pages, which help make my pages more readable by human users and at the same time help provide emphasis to key phrases for search engines.

Definitely agree along those lines. For my last version of Good-Tutorials I really tried to structure my documents a lot better by using more Hx tags (and so on), but as I'm thinking about changing things up a little now I can see that it would have been much easier if I kept it even more logical, more organized, etc. Basically, it gets back to my guiding principle- don't code for search engines, code for users (and yourself). By making your pages structurally sound it makes it a heck of a lot easy to play around with in the future, which encourages more people to come back, which encourages people to link to your site, which encourages search engines to rank you higher. As stymiee said... things take time. Right now that's the world we live in- search engine listings don't come overnight usually. But I believe if you build pages to do what they're supposed to do -- inform, educate, and entertain -- you'll be much better off in the long-term.

[KLB]

Basically, it gets back to my guiding principle- don't code for search engines, code for users (and yourself).

Absolutly!

By making your pages structurally sound it makes it a heck of a lot easy to play around with in the future, which encourages more people to come back, which encourages people to link to your site, which encourages search engines to rank you higher.

One of the best things one can do for this principle is to stop using tables. Tables are not ment for document structure they are ment for data sets. Using DIV tags and CSS allow the document to be layed out in a visually "pleasing" manner while still having a logical document structure (read sourcecode) that allows the most important parts of a webpage with the most important text/keywords to be at the top of the document while less important things like ads and menus can be placed towards the end of the sourcecode. This can also improve the usablity of a site for people using things like dynamic Braille displays.

[mcsolas]

@stymiee: You don't think there are some very large corporate websites that use this kind of strategy?

Care to post any examples? Just curious if there is any substance to this statement.

BTW: Couldnt google detect this: bgcolor white + textcolor white = you lose

[platinum]

Why is so hard to understand that sometimes we can't just show text on top of the page with header tags on index page.

You can put text anywhere you like... if you can't I suggest you review your design techniques.

I know I know about content and good optimizing but you are wrong I would be ranked higher with my hidden text but then it is too risky to do it so lets just forget about it.

Of course you may be better off with a page full of keywords hidden in the page, that's why it is not the right thing to do. But you can fit most words you need into your content and it will essentially get you the same result without risking being caught out.

[Mittineague]

A while back there was a thread where the poster was complaining about his PR being lower than his "cheating" competitors. Checking the other site revealed cloaked keywords that were visible in "view source" and with "mouse-down drag". Most of the keywords were variations, eg. "key words", "keywords", "key-words". I usually put variations in the meta tag, but if Google weighs these against actual use in the page I guess I lose out. And I must admit, the page would lose a bit of the "professional look" with all the variations visible in the page. Yet I want "unprofessional" searches to "hit" too. One way around this that I use is to "hide" the variations in alt values.

[LuckyShima]

@stymiee: You don't think there are some very large corporate websites that use this kind of strategy?

Yes, corporate and institutional websites use all sorts of obvious spamming strategies such as cloaking, gateway pages, and keyword stuffing, and never get banned. However, as Aspen pointed out, you will get banned for doing this if someone reports you.

[mcsolas]

Im a bit confused now.
What happens if you report one of the big guys for doing it?

At what point do you get big enough to be allowed to spam?

[stymiee]

At no point. Big sites have been removed fromt he SERPs from the spamming and you can be sure it will happen again.

I think I should mention less big guys spam then I think most people here believe. Once you're "big" you get the benefit of webmasters linking to you just because you're big. No need to spam any more.

[Mittineague]

Maybe in future it will have some kind of detection system

Like the way the w3c CSS validator can detect cloaking?

Same colors for color and background-color in two contexts

or it's ability to detect invisibility?

display : none;
....
visibility: hidden

[r937]

invisibility is not wrong, it's one of the key techniques behind sIFR