Q and A: Why can't I see my favicon?

Dear Kalena...

I have my own domain and I created a favicon. I did all I was supposed to do but still can't see the ico. In Mozilla we can see it on our office computer, but on the two other computers we can't see it on Explorer. I hope after 1.5 days of brain-wrecking trying..... you have the ground breaking answer for me. http://www.mohawkmotel.ca/favicon.ico

Thanks from Canada

Shirley

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Shirley

Don't panic - I see it just fine in both Firefox and IE from here. What version of IE are you testing it on? I'm using IE 7. Have you bookmarked the site and refreshed the page? Try doing that on the computers where you can't see it and also try dumping your browser cache, your temporary Internet files and your visited page history and then relaunch your browser. I'm betting this will solve the problem.

Meanwhile, you have a more pressing problem with the site. What on earth are you thinking keyword-stuffing the top and bottom of your home page with tiny text? You can't tell me that text is there for humans to read. Aren't you aware that such retro spam can earn you ranking suppression penalties on the search engines? And then you add insult to injury by stuffing (nearly) hidden links leading to some type of link farm all along the bottom of the page.

Are you not aware that these techniques go against Google's published Webmaster Guidelines? It doesn't look as though Google has caught it yet, but be ready for your rankings to plummet if they do. Tsk Tsk!

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Q and A: How can I get a top position in Google for my site?

Dear Kalena...

I am Verma from Mumbai. I submitted my site several times on GOOGLE. But I don't have any good results even my site is not listing on top 10 in google. So please can u send me some comments & Solutions . How can I get my site in google on top position...Please?

Verma

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Verma

Tsk Tsk. What a naughty site you have. And I'm not talking about the fact that it's advertising an escort service. I'm talking about the obvious spam techniques and search engine incompatibilities listed below:

• Keyword-stuffed, over-utilized Title Tag
• Excessive keyword repetition in META Keywords Tag
• Duplicate content in the both the Title Tag and META Description Tag
• Incorrect formatting of the Title Tag
• Multiple keyword-stuffed comment tags
  
• Multiple, keyword-stuffed nonsense META tags that are unsupported by any search engines
• Use of Flash in your HTML code placed above important text content
• Use of keyword-stuffed tiny text
• Hidden 1 x 1 pixel links
• Graphic navigation menu instead of text-based
• Use of low quality link farms to inflate link popularity
  
• Excessive use of flashing titty banners (ok this is not technically spam, but it should be!)

I could go on but I'd have to charge you a consulting fee. Nearly all these things go against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Still not sure why your site isn't ranking? You might also want to check out this post for info about recent changes to Google's algorithm that has affected sites containing adult content.

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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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A: Should I use text that is visible to search engines but not to humans?

Doug - give yourself a good smack and go to bed without supper.

Using text that is visible to search engines but not to humans is very naughty! It's retro search engine spam: a tactic that was used obsessively by search engine spammers way back prior to search engines implementing the aggressive anti-spam filters they use today.

It hasn't worked for many years, because it was a very simple matter for search engines to install a filter within their algorithms to compare a site's background color with it's text color and locate, ignore (and/or penalize) hidden text. So not only will using hidden text NOT HELP your site, it might actually HARM your ranking.

But thanks for providing our Retro Spam Tactic of the Week!

Q: Should I use text that is visible to search engines but not to humans?

Dear Kalena...

I was reading an article by you at Pandia about the importance of using search-engine-readable text on the home page of one's site.

You referred to the text needing to be "visible," and one test of that was whether one could select the text on screen (differentiated from graphical text). My question is about the "visibility" of the text. My home page has 50-75% black background. If I was to place text, black-on-black, would it still be read by the search engine? Does "visible" mean that it appears in the source code, or does it mean visible to the human eye? I would like to retain the, more or less, graphical nature of my home page but still have the benefit of capturing the attention of the search engine.

Doug