Search engine optimization: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 11:18, 24 March 2012

Revision as of 10:07, 25 March 2012

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[[spamdexing|Black hat SEO]] attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible [[Span and div|div]], or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as [[cloaking]].

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One infamousnotorious example was the February 2006 Google removal of both [[BMW]] Germany and [[Ricoh]] Germany for use of deceptive practices.<ref name="intwebspam">{{cite web|url=http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ramping-up-on-international-webspam/|publisher = mattcutts.com/blog | title=Ramping up on international webspam|publisher=mattcutts.com/blog|author=[[Matt Cutts]]|date=February 4, 2006|accessdate=2007-05-09}}</ref> Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.<ref>{{cite web|accessdate=2007-05-09|url=http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/recent-reinclusions/|publisher = mattcutts.com/blog | title=Recent reinclusions|author=[[Matt Cutts]]|date=February 7, 2006}}</ref>

== As a marketing strategy ==