Invisible text frowned upon by Google? Even get you banned?

I would like to use a few sentences of invisible text at the bottom of my page. This text would be the same color as the background, so it would be invisible.

I heard Google may ban you if you do this with keywords, but I would be using the same text content that's embedded in my flash content. I would like to do this because Google doesn't read my flash text.

Anyone know if Google looks at this as no-no? Will they ban me?

Thanks in advance for anyone's help.

Hey Trent,

I might be looked down upon by search engines, but I am yet to hear that someone was banned by Google as a result of such practice. Sure, if there is excess usage of invisible text, then perhaps they'll just drastically downgrade your site in the rankings. But for a line or two, I am not sure what the penalty is like.

What I'd look for is how effective this method is at all. It would seem that most search engines have long learned about this technique used by thousands of website owners and adjusted their search algorithms accordingly not to take invisible text into account when ranking sites.

Thanks for your reply.

About two lines is all I wanted to do. The reason I want to do it is I have a flash site and when you do a google search for it, it looks blank on the google search engine, because Google is not reading my flash text. I would like at least 2 sentences two show up. I think I would get higher ranks (if only slightly) too.

Hey guy, Best of Luck. You are going to challenge Google. Don't cry after getting the penalty award from Google......

The thing you want to do is one of the black hat techniques. By using such techniques one can easily get its goal but it may be temporarily because i have found some sort before. Google may not ban you but your site may be penalized by google which means your site will face ranking downward.

I understand where you're coming from, but I wouldn't do it.

There are ways to optimize flash for SEO and none of them are blackhat tactics. Do some research on how its done and you will have better luck than with methods like those.

This also reminds me of the following Dilbert comic.

To be honest, I'd focus my energies on moving away from an all-Flash website. First off, very few sites warrant it. Second, you know this first hand, it's terrible, and a hassle for SEO. Invest your time into re-doing the site instead of 'maintaining' an outdated website.

VG, love that Dilbert snippet. One of my faves!

You're getting banned because adding invisible text is a black hat technique.