I happened to come across this site last night..

And noticed that the user of the site is heavily padding his H1, A HREF and Keywords by adding multiple lines of code at the bottom of his pages wrapped as Headers, Links and Keywords but then based on his CSS, these elements are hidden from being seen in the web browser.

Does Google frown upon this sort of masking?

To answer your first question, yes, it is perfectly ethical. Ethics don't come into most seo, including this particular example.

To answer your second question, yes, Google does frown on that sort of masking. The site is taking a risk.

To answer your first question, yes, it is perfectly ethical. Ethics don't come into most seo, including this particular example.

To answer your second question, yes, Google does frown on that sort of masking. The site is taking a risk.

LOL.... thanks....

Maybe Ethics was a bad choice of words.

It wasn't a bad choice really. A lot of people misuse the word, and people get the idea that it's about ethics. Some of what is done is unethical, but not yer normal spam :)

There's a really big chance that this site could run into problems down the road if they keep to their same tactics.

The text is basically hidden from the users, but in the background for indexing and ranking reasons. This is what the search engines don't want, and using this same tactic on clients sites will most likely result in them getting into problems in the future as well.

Not a good idea.

If they did it on client sites, without the clients' knowledge of the risks and agreement, it would certainly be unethical.

Great... thank you for your responses...

I was looking at it saying to myself... "Something just doesn't seem right about this"

I've just been hired as our internet marketing specialist, and I already found a competitor whose first meta keyword was the trademarked name of my company. they listed every single competitor in their meta tags. its rediculous and i wanted to beat the pulp out of them, but they don't seem to be showing up in any searches! hope that decision maker gets fired, yeesh.

and I already found a competitor whose first meta keyword was the trademarked name of my company. they listed every single competitor in their meta tags. its rediculous and i wanted to beat the pulp out of them, but they don't seem to be showing up in any searches!

You should read the post on trademarked terms getting banned on PPC.

However, I do have to challenge what you are saying above. I don't do it myself, but I actually do not see an issue with using trademarked terms within web pages and/or keywords if it is does not violate the actual trademark as set forth by the USPTO approval.

After a year of waiting and going through the process, one of my sites/trademarks finally got approved by the the USPTO. As part of the process, the USPTO makes sure that the trademark is very specific in nature. Another entity may actually have the your same trademark, but for a completely different product or service.

For example, let's say you own a trademark that has been in existence for 15 years to sell products via a physical store front location. If you never applied for a trademark specifically to sell goods via the Internet, that means that you most likely do not have any authority over that trademark when others use it on their web pages for advertising purposes.

Check out www.uspto.gov and do a basic search for Google or Yahoo. You will find that they own different trademarks for different purposes. Yes they own the trademarks for services on the web, but they also own seperate trademarks for products like clothing. If you own a trademark for a product or service that you have promoted in the traditional world and never applied for an Internet trademark, these sites would be well within their rights to use the term.

There is another issue related to journalism and freedom of speech where a trademark could be meaningless, but I won't open that door up.

I've just been hired as our internet marketing specialist, and I already found a competitor whose first meta keyword was the trademarked name of my company. they listed every single competitor in their meta tags. its rediculous and i wanted to beat the pulp out of them, but they don't seem to be showing up in any searches! hope that decision maker gets fired, yeesh.Elizabeth, if the best they can do is use their meta keywords to compete for Google placement, then you're in good shape if the person responsible doesn't get fired; you'll beat them to a pulp in the SERPs. ;)

It's such a ridiculous tactic. I mean it would only make the most minimal of diifferences in ranking (if any) so the risks outweigh the benefits. So my thoughts are why do it. Such is life.

Krisval, I understand your point, but they are using the actual name of my company, (we'll just say ABC International) as well as the names of all our other competitors, (XYZ Technology Incorporated, etc). I'm not pointing this out because its a trademarked name (my mom runs a law firm, i know how rediculous it can be to try and nail people for this), but because this company is trying to come up on searches for the names of all its competitors. their site is ranked lower than almost everyone in our field, probably because of their moronic idea (the tag is over 2000 characters long).

A word to the wise, don't try and mess with the system, if you have a good site then you shouldn't have to!

A word to the wise, don't try and mess with the system, if you have a good site then you shouldn't have to!
call me unwise then...

sure you shouldn't have to, but why not gain extra exposure if you can?

so long as advertising is profitable then do so :)

I've just been hired as our internet marketing specialist, and I already found a competitor whose first meta keyword was the trademarked name of my company. they listed every single competitor in their meta tags. its rediculous and i wanted to beat the pulp out of them, but they don't seem to be showing up in any searches! hope that decision maker gets fired, yeesh.
I would not overly stress this... the keyword meta tag is not really used any more and should soon be truely deprecated... they do have the ability to use the names for PPC - Overture and Google allow it - as long as they are not mentioning it in the copy and are sending traffic to pages that do comparable work.

I think I'm going to swim against the flow on this one. I don't see anything wrong with trying to be ranked for another company's name, and I see everything right with it.

It's not too different from a bank advertisement, which states that its interest rates are lower than <a list of named banks>. I wouldn't see anything wrong with placing advertisements for my d.i.y. shop along the route that many people take to get to one particular d.i.y. shop. That's pretty much what getting ranked in the serps for a competitor's name is about.

I think there may be laws against it in the UK, but I still see nothing wrong with it.

Phil,

I may have misunderstood you, but I see a lot wrong with trying to rank for another companies name.

In regard to the Bank anology. Yes banks compete. They compete on benefits. I don't think I have ever seen a Bank trying to compete by using another Banks name, unless the Bank was comparing benefits. That would be a different discussion IMO.

the keyword meta tag is not really used any moreIt is by me, but not for Google. :cool:

Getting back to the points in the original post rather than the ethics of infringing/capitalizing on branding (there's been a whole thread on that) - I agree that the "optimization" being used isn't an ethical issue when people do it on their own sites - or client sites with full disclosure of suitability and risk to their clients. The engines don't like anything hidden, and if a company were to infringe enough to irritate their competitors they'd be in trouble if the competitors found grounds to head over to the spam report.

Agreed, Connie and Marcia. IMHO, you should worry about YOUR content and YOUR advantages vs competitors. You can't really make an argument based on ethics (heck they hardly exist anymore), but what your gut tells you is shady. (My opinion isn't going to change, so don't even try ;) call me naive, but there's a reason we do all this research)

a word to all the new kids on the block, you don't have to use tricks to be good at SEO.

humbly yours,
Elizabeth