Well this is a very old topic and I'm quite sure that every SEO nowadays know that this is a big NO. However,mistakes can happen every day. My web designer,who has no (0%) knowledge of SEO,thought a paragraph of text ugly to the page but he didn't want to deleted it.Instead,he hid it - using the same white color as the background.And he didn't tell me because he thought it was a piece of cake. And Google,who is a very kind person,found this and took care of it by down ranking all of my hundreds of core keywords and long tail keywords. And my traffic down to only 10% of what was before the change. All happened within 2 days! I think this is a lesson for me... Just wondering if any of you guys has come through similar situation. And can you believe that Google is taking actions so fast?Only a day after the change he's punishing me! Oh,and my question is,how long do you think G will put my rankings back?I have had the hidden text removed immediately after I noticed it.
Don't know, but if this is the case I think you better hire a new designer that knows what they are doing.
Penalties usually take between 3 months and 6 months to fully recover from. I hope it doesn't take that long for you, especially since this wasn't your fault at all. Hope your site comes back soon.
Well, if it is mistake or intentional, Google doesn't know that so sorry if you are being affected. Just from now on, always check the activities going on to your site and make immediate reaction if there's something done wrong.
My site was also banned once a few years ago for a hidden text. Google sent me a message via Google Webmaster Tools and banned the site what was 100% correct. After removing the hidden text I fiLled in a form for reconsideration. My site was back with all the rankings in 1 week and I learned my lesson.
Just remove this hidden text form your website and will reconsideration request via Google webmaster tools But usually Google is more strict with hidden text, because my website god completely de-indexed after I accidently left text in code, but got it back on Google but it took like two and a half months
thanks all. additional question,is this black hat (as seen by Google): Use CSS to move text out of screen,say 1000 pixels right/left to the popular 1024*768 screen. This is actually another kind of "invisible" text but I'm not sure if it is forbidden,same as same color text.
One of the nightmares you can have is when users can harm your site and be penalized by Google. When you use Google Webmaster Console, you can receive a message, if your website (if you do not use Google Webmaster Console, then I do not know if I've ever contact).
For some serious cases, your website will be deindexed and no longer get indexed again from google. Always important to do SEO in right way.
Google gives us some surprise sometimes, no matter it is good one or bad one,, actually sometimes if I think the anchor text linking from other site, forum, comment, etc. is dangerous, I prefer using a common people's name like 'Robert' instead of my keywords like XXX tours... don't cheat google no matter you know it or not and do it slowly if possible. You are a bicycle lover?! Me too... hoping we can bike more and do less daily SEO works lol.... the nature is of more fun than computers.
I'd put in a request for reconsideration if it wasn't your fault. I had to do that once before and my site was back in the same place in a few days.
@Amator, thanks for clarifying this for me.Had doubted this but was not sure. @RobertoSoto Yet I see your signature optimized for your KWs. And yes,I am a cycling lover.