Web site spam
In my last post I mentioned Ann Smarty’s comprehensive article about SEO tools. One of the tools I looked at is a search engine SPAM detector. The tool looks for keyword stuffing, doorway farms and hidden text, but is not able to find Javascript or CSS positioning/layering based techniques.
Front screen of the Spam detector Web site
I didn’t really think I would have a problem, but I tried it on one of my sites and was surprised to see the some of the CSS I had used to include a horizontal menu was showing as potential spam. What I had done was to create one large php menu file that I include in every page of my site, with each sub menu in a seperate division, like so:
<div class=”seo”>
<ul>
<li><a href=”search-engine-optimization.php”>START HERE</a></li>
<li><a href=”search-engine-optimization-prices.php”>PRICES</a></li>
</ul>
</div><!–end div id seo –>
My CSS file included the following syntax:
.seo { display: none; }
.resources { display: none; }
.about { display: none; }
body#seo .seo { display: block; }
body#resources .resources { display: block; }
body#about .about { display: block; }
The body tag of each page included an ID, e.g.
<body id=”seo”>
The result was that pages with the body tag ID of ‘SEO’ have the SEO menu included. Pages with the body tag ID of ‘resources’ have the resources menu included, and so on….
This was the technique that the search engine SPAM detector picked up.
Although this technique was not meant to be deceptive, I could not find anything in Matt Cutt’s blog or elsewhere to indicate that Google regarded using CSS in this way as acceptable practice.
To be on the safe side I decided to change my menu to include items selected by a simple php routine based on page name. Hence no need to use the display: none; CSS any longer.
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