Does Google devalue links decorated and hidden as text?

i wouldn't try it, you might get caught and banned

 

MC didn't seem to be talking about what the op was talking about - he was referring to links that were too small to see or invisible or in a dot or something - that's completely different imho.

I can see why someone might try to minimize the obviousness of links in their pages but not make them so that readers don't know they are links... the only real reason might be to try and sell links. An inexperienced seo'er might not know to check robot simulators and similar tools to see the number of outbound links on a page.

Trying to keep your readers from clicking is silly. If you don't want them leaving the site, don't put links in your page or use a "_blank" tag.

so draw your own conclusions about why someone would do it, but I don't think google cares as long as they aren't hidden in the ways that MC's blog was about.

Lisa

 

If you read further down the page he does...

I don't think they'd be able to detect this on a large scale (could be wrong!) as there are 6,000,000 ways to control the styles - choose one!