Went Hunting Today

[R.T.Bucher]

For other affiliates in my niche, and I found one of the so called top internet marketers for Clickbank in a PPC ad...

So I checked his html source and I found two anchor tags which were not clickable links, it just had the ahref tag but their invisible to the viewer.

Is this legal? it probably drastically reduces his PPC costs, they led to articles on two different sites.

[tim_buchalka]

Originally Posted by Rob.B

For other affiliates in my niche, and I found one of the so called top internet marketers for Clickbank in a PPC ad...

So I checked his html source and I found two anchor tags which were not clickable links, it just had the ahref tag but their invisible to the viewer.

Is this legal? it probably drastically reduces his PPC costs, they led to articles on two different sites.

Do you mean they were clickable links but had something like

<style>
a{text-decoration:none;}
</style>

In the stylesheet?

That is pretty common (there are also other ways to do it e.g. with color, etc).

Not sure whether it's illegal (should ask my brother he is the ppc guy) but it would be pretty easy for google to find this type of stuff if they wanted to.

There are a variety of other reasons to do similar things.

For example for seo purposes I don't want to link the word "home" which the user typically is used to for navigation purposes on the page as anchor text on my site.

So I'll make that link a nofollow, and do something similar to hiding the link with the keyword I want optimized back to the home page elsewhere on the page, or maybe at the footer, etc.

Maybe email the adwords guys and ask for a ruling.

Or better still do a split test yourself (two separate adgroups, one with normal page, one with articles linked normally, another with articles linked hidden, and check your results (cost, etc).

Cheers


Cheers

[R.T.Bucher]

No, it was just a ahref tag, hidden at the bottom of the source, not visible to the viewer. I imagine this helps with Adwords, since it would send the message to the spider there is move valuable information to be found.

Of course the links we not clickable and invisisble to the visitor.

[SaSeoPete]

I am pretty sure Google will pick that up very quickly and the guy will get penalized.

[dburk]

Hi Rob,

Yes, this is done to add more content to for visitors and bots to better understand what the page is about.

And no, Google will not penalize you for this, there is no reason for them to.

Google does not like hidden text. The example you are giving is NOT hiding text.

Adding style that enhances some text and/or links over others, is a completely acceptable practice. It does not deceive or trick anyone in anyway. It's simply a way of emphasizing or deemphasizing text or links that are visible.

Virtually every website on the Internet does this to a greater or lessor extent. Even Google uses this tactic extensively.

"Nothing to see here folks... move along". Monty Python

[R.T.Bucher]

You mean Google does not care if you put a ahref tag in your code, which is only visible to the spiders. And how does it enhance the site for visitors when they can't even see it.

[dburk]

Hi Rob,

It depends on if you are saying "hidden text" or deemphasized styling.

Hidden text is definitely a no-no.

Using styling to emphasize or deemphasize links or text is just "good form". Deemphasized is NOT the same as "hidden", I think it's important not to confuse the two.

[R.T.Bucher]

Ok thanks, that clarifys it, it's hidden and does not show up to the human eye.