Why hidden text is considered as black hat SEO

I heard that hidden links and hidden text are considered as black hat and google ban those sites which do this.

What is the reason for this ??????

 

Because there is no valid reason to hide text or links from your visitors. If you don't want them to read it, or click the links, what's it doing on your site?

 

Because people abused it and stuffed (spammed) keywords into unseen places. They put it into text the same color as the background, html comments, text that is shifted past the viewable page, etc.

The search engines are good at recognizing it so don't try it.

 

Is Continue reading considered as hiding text ?

 

ya, crt.,.......

 

Simplified asnwer..

 

Because google wants everything is too clear for it and its visitor, will not let you play game with the visitors

 

Because it manipulates the SE.

 

Google Sucks!

 

Hidden texts are often used to spam keywords. It's unethical.

 

Hidden text isn't ALWAYS considered black hat by Google and it does not ALWAYS lead to a penalty even if you get reported to Google and a Googler manually reviews your site. It totally depends on the intent of using the hidden text.

If the text can never be displayed on the page (unhidden) by the user and/or if you are using hidden text to spam keywords like "Britney Spears" or "Viagra" on a site that has nothing to do with Britney or medicine, then yea... If you get reported you will almost certainly get penalized.

However, if you are using hidden text on your page for hover tips so that when a user hovers their mouse over a particular word on the the page, they get an explanation of that word/help for that word, this will likely not be a problem. Even if you get reported for it and a Googler manually reviews your site, you are not likely to be penalized so long as the hidden text becomes viewable and the text adds to the user experience in some way.

When trying to determine whether the use of hidden text is okay I always ask myself, "If I were to get reported to Google and a Googler manually reviewed my site, would it be blatently obvious to them that the purpose of my using hidden text was to benefit my user in some way?"

If the answer is yes then it doesn't matter that you might ALSO gain SEO benefits for the words in the hidden text. The SEO benefit of the hidden text is irrelevant as long as using the hidden text is ALSO of some benefit to your users.

However, if using the hidden text provides your users ZERO benefit and ONLY serves to manipulate your rankings, this is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and will likely NOT withstand a manual review by a Googler (i.e. it will almost certainly lead to a penalty of some sort).

 

websites are made for the human visitors and not the search engines and search engines work to deliver the best results to the online users. to deliver the best they count many parameters out of which one of the most important thing is content. if you are hiding the content from the user then what is the use of it? just to get noticed by search engines???

 

Thank you Shailendra... I agree with you...hidden texts aren't always Black hat technique Eg: Alt tags for images.

 

hidden texts are considered black hat if it's not relevant, or your hiding your kw's...

 

yes hidden text is condidered as black hat seo.. you can check more details on google guidelines.. they have clearly specified it.

 

The reason is that search engines have a real downer on you serving up something different to THEM than what you serve up to ordinary surfers. I'm sure you can figure out why. If you can't PM me and I'll explain more.

 

This refers to the nature of a search engine: Referencing information for visitors. Google is giving specific values to pages with specific content. When you search for something on Google, the results will show the pages where you can find what you are looking for. If the page has hidden text, then the visitors will not see or find the information. Naturally, hidden text cannot be considered as a valuable source of information for visitors. It is the same thing concerning the links. In both case many people abused of it. That is why Google does ban this.

 

alt tags aren't hidden text - the purpose of an alt tag is to describe the image in a browser that doesn't show the image.

 

Awesome information! I can add to the example of the hove rover w/pop-up... what if one set a hoverover function so that the user can hover over and see the text behind an image (is. - uses in the navigation menu). Those things are also not gonna be considered black hat in any way!

 

The rule on JavaScript events is that the text must be visible "onLoad", then hidden. If the text starts out hidden (CSS file) then it violates the Google rules.

On thing no one has discussed is that "hidden text" is a valid reason to report a site to Google. Then everything else that is taking place will be reviewed by a human. This is the primary reason not to use "hidden text".