Spamming Google - to report or not to report this?

For months I've been trying to figure out how a certain site was getting away with REAMS of hidden text and hidden links on every single one of their 34,000 pages indexed on google, artificially inflating their rankings in Google (and others) even on page where there is not ONE STITCH of content visible to the naked eye!

Today I hit on it...
This is in their style sheet:

H1.AAA
{
FONT-WEIGHT: normal;
FONT-SIZE: 12pt;
FONT-STYLE: normal;
LINE-HEIGHT: normal;
LETTER-SPACING: normal;
LEFT: 0px;
TOP: 0px;
CLIP: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px);
COLOR: #000000;
FONT-FAMILY: Arial,sans-serif;
POSITION: absolute;
DISPLAY: none;
TEXT-DECORATION: none
}

(and various other variations as H2, H3 etc)

THEN... in the .robots.txt file there is ...

User-agent: *
Disallow: /styles/

Very, very clever, I have to say. But how to get Google to wake up to this?
Or is it a case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?"

 

Yes it is.

Leave it be.

(IMO)

 

Leave a link on the forum, but not a live link, that way they will not be able to track it back to here.

Let us look at it

 

can i pm it to you rather? I'm really reluctant to post the link .... (hate being a ratter)

 

Go ahead, but I don't know why you are afraid to post a dead link they will not find out if the link is dead man.

 

ok, here goes

w w w . s l e e p i n g - o u t . c o . z a

Bit this is what worries me, their newly launched UK site (launched today it seems)

w w w. u k .s l e e p i n g - o u t .c o m

you have to open the pages in a wysiwig editor & then look at the code

 

Now if any member can help out here please do, but do not post a live link here so there are no track backs.

Believe it or not we have to warn some members about such things around here

 

oh and you got to go to a search results page to see it, home page not tooo bad but there is hidden text.

 

what did i do wrong anthony?

 

I am not talking about you Colin

 

uh huh, realised after i posted.
i hope i don't have these people after me now.

i think it is a very nice site, they should just play fair.

 

Your above post needs to be explained in detail, I don't understand what you are talking about Colin.

 

wait- I never understood this. What's wrong with posting the link, are some guys going to gun you down or hack your sites?

 

The reason for a dead link is so we do not alert the guy we are investigating.

So no other member should post the links we are looking at, does that make sense David?

 

ah - cyrstal clear now.

 

I don't think it matters that he can track back that we are investigating. The worst that could happen by posting a live link, however, would be the link to a "bad neighborhood".

 

I'm not sure I understand your comment, SEbasic ("Leave it be.").

If you find a site that is doing something wrong, why NOT report it? In some cases, ity helps and Google takes action. And even if nothing happens, what have you lost?

 

DR10 has caused SE problems Minstrel

 

No it hasn't,

I just hate the idea of one of my sites being reported.

I don't report spammy sites. That's just my way.

Also, don't forget that the site you report may be doing something similiar to yoiu in terms of SEO...

If google makes tweaks to filter out that site, then your could be hit too.

 

SE, you better get it right, yesterday you were telling folks about driving clicks to AS, to put it nice.

Like Minstrel mentions, you may need to rethink your position