My site's URL is: http://www.lolbingo.net/ This page used to look a lot different earlier today, kind of like: http://www.lolblackjack.com/ , except now I stripped off most of the fancy graphics and stuff in order to diagnose and improve my rankings. I also turned my black BODY-BACKGROUND color to white, because maybe Google doesn't like my BODY-TEXT also being black, even though it's on a white background Inside of a separate table. Basically I had a white background behind a graphic background image, and then white text on TOP of that graphic, so it was clearly visible to the visitor, but MAY have been an issue with Google. I colored this text into a light-gold color (FFFFCC) so that you can see what I'm talking about. So could this have caused a hard penalty with Google where I could lose most of my visitors? Also, I very much like the original white text on top of my graphic, but I changed it to FFFFCC just in case Google is having issues with this. As you can still see, FFFFCC is also very close to white (I want a lighter text on that graphic), so the real question is if this is going to be an issue with Google? If it is, what would be the darkest color I could use in order to avoid a "nearly hidden text" penalty? I would really hope a Google Engineer or someone who knows there stuff can come on and answer this. This problem may sound a bit complicated so I apologize if people don't understand what I'm talking about. I've also had issues with my sites for years now and I'm getting new evidence from other sites that I created that this "hidden text" fix might be the ultimate solution. The things that I pointed out have been around pretty much as long as the site has existed as well.
if you have hidden text (same color background and text), you will have penalty. however, its hard for google to detect such hidden text sometimes as you can have a white background image and white text instead of white HTML background color code and text. it is easier for google to detect if you use html color code by matching the background and text but how would they know the color of the image? no way unless someone reports you site. i myself dont see any need for hidden text as you can easily develop a content rich site anyways. some site templates may not allow much text on the main body and you may want your visitors to click on the buy now link rather than offer them educational materials but you can certainly add text at the bottom of your index page. you can also add content pages and link to them using menu or sitemap. always conside one fact, if your visitors dont like you being sneaky, google may not like it either
yeah I know it's black hat, that is the whole reason I am asking this question. Basically I don't want to accidentally do this while I am picking out a good set of colors for the site design.