Is this technique illegal?

While doing SEO work for a few of our clients - we ran across a 'competitor' who seems to be doing great in Google BUT (I believe) what they are doing is probably illegal. On their home pages (and other pages throughout the sites they build) you cannot see ANY links to other websites they built or are promoting, and yet... when you look at their source code, you see this:


<p class="hidden">
<a href="http://www.creativearc.com/" style="display: none;">Minneapolis Web Design</a>
<a href="http://www.creativearc.com/indianapolis.php" style="display: none;">Indianapolis Web Design</a>
<a href="http://www.montanalegend.com/" style="display: none;">angus beef</a>
<a href="http://www.montanalegend.com/natural/" style="display: none;">natural beef</a>
<a href="http://www.montanalegend.com/artisan/" style="display: none;">prime beef</a>
<a href="http://www.montanalegend.com/dryaged/" style="display: none;">dry aged</a>
<a href="http://www.armchairinterviews.com/past-guests/audio/" style="display: none;">author interviews</a>
</p>

The list is (of course) much longer.... but I'm wondering how they are getting away with this technique???

An example can be found at This Site

Any thoughts or ideas are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!!

 

Hmmm...curious. I don't know about it being illegal per se, but it's certainly a questionable practice.

I wonder how the Googlebot sees those links and if it can sniff out that they aren't visible on the page.

 

It's not illegal but I believe it is against Google's TOS. You might be able to get that site de-indexed.

 

..and how would one go about doing that??

(it seems like Googlebot is seeing those links because it's using a class to mark the .html as invisible vs. commenting them out... but I'm not certain)

Thanks for the quick replies

 

Illegal? I don't know about that. More along the lines of hidden links and shady techniques to get pages indexed and pass link popularity.

All they're doing is using CSS to 'hide' the content. First indication <p class="hidden"> and the style="display: none;"

Just look at the style sheet and see what they're doing.

 

Oh definitely turn them in to Google. That is an example of both sloppy and lazy SEO.

 

I believe its not illegal or against Google's TOS. All their doing is adding hidden backlinks to other websites.

 

Imagine if they had all those links listed and viewable at the end of their page. It would look like sh*t.
On the other hand, Google usually frowns on hidden text.

 

Thanks PHPGator - I'll definitely check that out.

Thanks for everyone else's take on the situation. It's definitely not a technique I would ever use and I agree with the Lazy SEO comment - it just seems to be working 'too well' for them and I was wondering why they aren't being penalized for their shady practices. But, if it's not really illegal and it's simply another method for providing back links, why isn't this practice more common???

~Topspin

 

But why? Why is the question here? if they are not visible, why are they hidden? remember it's "hidden" so that means it is for the purpose of increasing those outbound links PR, this is like a black hat method.

 

I think Google don't like hidden things

 

Yes, its illegal, I suspect he could do 20 years to life for that stunt!!! ;-)
I think it is on the "shady" side. One of those "If I can get away with it" sort of things...
Some say that SE's dont read/use css, but I got a hunch that they do.. They are too advanced to let these little things slip by. Just my opinion. What do you think? Good conversation point at a minimum...

 

Trick #1, if your going to hide text, don't use a class of "hidden"...

 

So true. It is like saying:"hey google, i am hiding my text, you wont find it here" lolz

 

Might be they are very honest. They are doing wrong things but telling to Google we are doing wrong things so do not Penalize us. He hee hee so funny.