Google Nexus One phone page uses shady Hidden Text SEO Technique
SEOs: Open up Google’s Nexus One phone page in a tab, and pop over to Google’s text-cache of the same page in another. Notice anything off? Take a peek at the HTML and CSS and see if you can figure out where things get fishy.
Did you see it?
Let’s take a look at the User’s View vs Search Engine’s View side-by-side:
(see the big blue text: “Google Phone”)
I must admit it’s not the most heinous of SEO violations, but I would call it a guidelines violation nevertheless: Google uses a sneaky CSS technique to show Search Engines an <H1> tag that says “Google Phone” in place of what users see as the “Nexus One” logo. In its Webmaster Guidelines, Google says:
Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:
- Using CSS to hide text
To be fair, I don’t think Google is really gaining anything from this, unless they are using it to get around the anti-Googlebombing measure that was implemented a while ago. But that’s just dangerous speculation. I am guessing the real story is that not everyone at Google is an SEO geek, and some poor wireframe monkey did it because that’s what he/she has always done.
What exactly is Google doing wrong?
Google is using a ghetto version of CSS image replacement to tell Search Engines: “Hey I should rank for ‘Google Phone’ cuz that’s what people search for and it’s in my H1 tag” while telling users: “Google Phone is so 2007, call this new gadget the Nexus One.”
Basically, somewhere deep within a CSS file (here), there is code that sets a text-indent:-5000px style on the H1 tag text. This effectively places the text so far off screen that no one but this guy would possibly ever see it.
What do you think? Is this just another case of SEO “playa hatin”? Is it not even a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines? Should i be scared of the Nexus?
