I've heard of people using hidden links (although search engines discourage it), but when I've seen that done, the hidden links are to webpages/websites.

Would there be any reason someone would put in a hidden link to an e-mail address? I'm always reluctant to put e-mail addresses on webpages because of the spam crawlers, but I really can't think of any reason for someone to put a hidden link to an e-mail address.

I mean, search engines don't count e-mail links the same as href links, do they?

How would a spider see a link within an email?

Am I understanding your post?

If you are talking of email links like:<a href="mailto:someone@somewhere.com">email</a>
then the answer is: SEs do not consider this the same as a regular href to a URL.

^ Yes, that's what I mean. Although the "email" is hidden or only one character or the same color as the background or something. I didn't think the SE's counted it equal to a href, so I don't understand why anyone would do it.

Maybe they are trying to hide the email from the spiders, there are spiders that go around and collect email addresses. :confused: