Tiny White Text

Hi - I have been catching up on my SEO reading and have read that in Google's last dance, it may have removed webpages with Tiny White text considering them as possible spam. It then left only one page of the website in the index.

If this is so, my website at

http://www.integratedresourcemgmt.com

In a recent redesign I used small text and white text (although the white text is not in a white background) and all my site's webpages have been deleted from Google when doing a backward link check except for the home page.

I did write Google, but just got a canned response. Does anyone have any information that could help me here? Thanks, Beth

I don't know the answer to your question.... but... this is another reason why bans should be communicated.

If it was my site, that white text would be gone already. If you have a good site that you depend upon for income then you can't take any chances.

Do you think the text size is a problem? It must be. I guess I have to do a redo ... unfortunately. Thanks for your advise. The page had a rank of 5 out of 10 prior to the dance and now it is at 3 out of 10. Kindof a bummer. -Beth

How tiny? If it is small enough that visitors can't see it easily you might be penalized for it.

As for your site disappearing... it's not unusual for a site that is not penalized to flash in and out of the SERPs. Don't write things off yet but instead be patient.

PR might also drop from inefficient internal linkage decisions on your own site or a loss of inbound links.

I have read almost everything out there and I really don't see anything wrong with my linking system. Do you have any tips. I am going to eliminate the white text and increase the size after the finish of the next dance. Thanks again, I really appreciate it. I am a major sufferer of that GDS (google dance syndrome). -Beth

Hello Beth,
I think your white text would be fine if it were done using CSS. If someone replies that I am wrong then I have some sites to change myself.

Also, have you read this article about moving content up the page?

http://www.onlinetools.org/articles...content_all.php

It shows you how to break the spine and move table elements around. I found it interesting and applied the theory to my largest site and a new site in development. Along with changing all internal links from index.html to my full URL, I am hopeful these little changes will do some good.

I think this is just some "google-myth" that's spreading around the web. In the eyes of the robot the text-color has no effect, it's plain text like everything else.

Ban comes for sure only from two things: cloaking and spamming. Cloaking is sending SEOd data for spider, spamming is considered as a too high keyword density. Hidden text only affects your keyword density; overuse it and your dead ;) Google is only mathematic formulas. Nothing more, nothing less...

I see you mention TINY well I do know that some search engines do consider very tiny text as a form of spam because they feel you are trying to hide the text from even being read or understood. Maybe trying to hide keywords not visible on the page.

I always make sure to use size 2 or above..... never 1.

Hi - The weird thing is that Google doesn't seem to be working very well. Check out this site:

http://www.lakeviewproperties.com/

it lists #1 with a search for "properties in tahoe". At the bottom of the page there are probably 500 hidden words in the blue. So, something is really wrong as I made a spam request to Google and they have done nothing about it. -Beth

That is what you definately call spamming the ssearch engine.
LOL

I've used 75% / 1 sized fonts for years in my copyright/footer/header statements and have never ever been banned. So I have my reasons to say this is not true. It is also easy to reason this one:

hidden text full of keywords => too high keyword density => punishment

hidden text with no keywords/low kw density => no effect on page keyword density => no punishment.

Simple logical rules apply.

It's all up to keyword density. This page does not have anything that goes to dangerous keyword-density zone; top keyword is tahoe with 14.11% density (which is pretty good). There's simply so much (spam) keywords that whole thing just turns into a word list. It's just pure co-insidence that this page winds up #1.

As for the google spam report...
Google normally doesn't penalize single sites (they must get daily thousands if not more spam reports), they tend to enhance their spam filters.

http://www.google.com/search?source...roperties%2Ecom

this is why it came up first - not because of those keywords.

Doing a search on goole for
- Mountain Real Estate at beautiful Lake Tahoe -
Shows this site at #2

This search phrase is in the text next to last line of the tiny text

If you notice the results description it shows:

"Lake Tahoe Real Estate - LAKEVIEW PROPERTIES - Homes Cabins ... Lake Tahoe Alpine Real Estate. .Mountain Real Estate at beautiful Lake Tahoe Squaw
Valley real estate. Alpine Meadows real estate. Northstar real estate. ...
Description: Real estate and vacation rentals in the Lake Tahoe area. Links to maps, photo gallery and local information"

This would seem to me that google didn't penalize for this since it uses its text in the result.

I might try using this method for common misspelling, etc for some of my product.

Any thoughts on this

tyminer.

The site http://www.lakeviewproperties.com/ does use some tactic Google may not solve. The text at the bottom is not the same color as the background. The text color is #6666FF while the background is #0066FF. I think Google can not detect indentical but different colors. They are NOT hidden text to Google (probably other SEs). But human can not see them.