Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

This is one of my favorite myths about search engine rankings because it cuts to the heart of early attempts at “search engine gaming.” The story goes that in the early days folks would place words like “sex” in a white font on pages with white backgrounds so their readers couldn’t read the text but search engines would. Common wisdom said at the time that you would be penalized for such a stunt because it just wasn’t fair or in the spirit of legitimate search engine marketing.

I’ve always been suspicious of this myth myself, especially today when things like font and background colors can be hidden deep within pages of CSS or locked up in complicated background images. Even in the old days an industrious designer could simply set a page background to #000000 (black), place a white background image (.gif) over the top and then write all the “hidden” white text he or she so desired. Were we to believe that the search engines were employing some type of screen capture tool to see how pages actually rendered, images and all? I think not.

Anyway, to our test results. For this test we built two pages: one with black text on a white background, the other with white text on a white background (no css or images involved), both with the same keyword. Both of our pages were indexed by Google around the same time and guess which one came out on top? The black text on a white background - no big surprise. What is surprising, however, is that the white on white page was fully indexed by Google just as if it were a normal page. No penalty for hiding text.

In our Yahoo! test, the white on white page was actually indexed at the expense of the black on white page which was not listed at all. Apparently Yahoo! prefers search engine gaming.

Seriously though, while it is possible to get hidden text indexed by the search engines it is not a strategy we recommend, except in moderation. If you have a sentence or a few words you’d like to have indexed but don’t necessarily want your readers to see, you probably won’t be penalized - just don’t overdo it. Unless of course you’re trying to get listed in Yahoo!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Search engine ranking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.