Google Webmaster Guidelines are in Black and white.
I came across a website today for a company over in the west of Ireland doing surfing lessons and when I scrolled down the page i noticed that they have about 6 inches of nothing at the bottom. I click the mouse the tried to select and there it was . . . paragraphs and paragraphs or extra hidden content.
I think it strange it this day and age to be still pulling tricks like this and yet I also noticed that they are number one in google for the services they provide. So are they actually doing anything wrong, according to Google’s webmaster Guidelines we shouldn’t do this but on the other hand they still have an ok page rank of 4.
These hidden text guidelines go a little further and tell us that if Google find these they they can remove the site from their index. Yes, that means throw you out of Google. It happens all the time and business are there one day and gone the next. Not understanding that their webmaster has actually put their their business offline to google users.
For a quick glance of do’s and don’t in website design see the following google help and guidelines
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
