Q and A: Does the definition of hidden text include different shades of the same color?

Dear Kalena...

I have a question about this which I read on a site:

"The most common spam I see is accidental. A webmaster innocently does something such as using white font in a colored table, when he happens to also have a page with a white background. From a search engine's point of view this is spamming because he has hidden text. You aren't allowed to have text the same color as your page background."

I understand her point about white and white. I have changed my background to pale blue but some of my text and all of my links are two dark shades of blue. Does she include different shades of the same shade of one color? I hope it would consider hidden text only as an identical color and shade of that color.

ContactLab

Kalena's Answer:

Dear ContactLab

The author of that quote is correct. It can be a problem for webmasters using tables, where if they have a white page background and a colored table, any white text in that table may trip a spam filter on a search engine on the look out for font the same color as the overall page background.

But I think search engine robots are getting more sophisticated these days and can probably detect if a table is being used within the code. To be on the safe side, I would avoid using text in a table on your site that is the exact same color as your page background. A shade or two difference should be fine as I believe the spider would be looking for an exact color code match, not similar shades of the same color.

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