invisible links on home page

Hello to all.

I have question about using invisible links on a homepage. The website concerned has about 5 links that are made invisable by changing the colour and size using css. It has been like this for many years.

Basically they were put there by a designer years ago. They consists of a 5 keywords linking to a partner website.

My question is... will this be effecting the website in a negative way? also, should they be removed?

Many thanks for all advice.

 

That's called cloaking...very black hat. Will get you in big trouble if you get caught.

 

Yes. They should be removed.

Google Information for Webmasters

 

remove them ASAP or change the style to make them viewable. Really depends on the relation with the partners. Good luck...

 

Actually, many websites can have "hidden" links for innocent reasons.

Try deleting a linked graphic in Mozilla composer, and looking at the html code with a text editor. The link will still be there, but "hidden" in the sense that there is no anchor text.

A good reason not to use a browser add-on to write web pages I guess, but I haven't checked this out for other software.

Cheers,
Paz.

 

"Innocent" reasons or by intent - it can still get you penalized.

Good point, though... check your code.

 

Also, thats not cloaking, its hidden text.

 

Sorry to disagree, but it isn't. Cloaking is the process of serving one set of content to the spiders, and another to the user.

One word of advice though, if those links are aceptable to you, then I wouldn't remove them, as they could in fact be helping your site to rank if the anchor text is a keyword you are targetting on your site (anchor page). Anchor text gets given more weight in the search algo, so if you remove it, you would not only be reducing the density, you would also be losing the added weight of the anchor text.

 

Please referr to the quote in my signature for how Google feels about "mistakes"

 

as stated by everyone else..remove em! cloaking is not good..its as bad as invisible text..

 

He isn't cloaking. He is using invisible text.

I think some people are getting the two confused for some reason (they are nothing alike).

 

I would say you are safe as long as your users can benefit from this in some way...

if you are selling hidden links to poker or viagra sites you might get in trouble, but otherwise, just let it be the way it is or has been for years.

 

Not good advice, IMO.

If a competitor spots it and reports it to Google or MSN or Yahoo, the consequences will probably not be good.

 

true, it might back fire

but read my first line: as long as it benefits your users.


if not - just hidden spammy links with a lot of high paying keywords that's just sad and will trigger your competition

 

If the links are beneficial to visitors, then make them visible. If not, remove them.

How will it benefit visitors to get the site banned from SEs?

 

The site does absolutely definately does not use cloaking and is not a spam site.

I'm quite suprised how some people are so quick just jump and assume that any hidden links are malicious.

However, im sure the company would not like their site banned from the search engines. Some good points raised.

As the links don't serve any real purpose to the users I think i shall remove them.

I just hope that this not effect the ranking of the partner website.

 

It doesn't matter if they are malicious or well-intentioned. The search engine guidelines have made it clear that they consider them to be against the rules ("illegal"). That's the important thing.

 

Dear me what a load of old twaddle some people spout.

I have said it once, but please let me say it again. Removing these links will have an impact. It will impact on the sites they are linking to, and it might impact slightly on the ranking of the site itself.

I honestly do not know what all the damn fuss is about. If the links are legitimate links then just make the bloody things visible. This will not impact on the ranking of the anchor or target pages rankings, and the ONLY affect will be that people can see them.

As for there being a legitimate use of hidden text, what absolute Bull. ANYTHING on your page should be visible to the viewer, if it isn't it is spam, and you can dress it up as you want. This includes visible text that is off page via CSS absolute positioning.

 

Amen.

I do not understand why this seems to be such a baffling concept in this thread...

 

It won't effect ranking of partner site as long as that site doesn't link back.