101 Articles CSS Spam
CSS SPAM
CSS is an abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheets. It is a language used for describing the presentation semantics of a document written in markup language. Basically it is used for handling the looks and formatting aspects of a webpage or as a markup language document. CSS language is closely tied with HTML and XHTML and you can find applications of CSS commonly in these documents. However, CSS is also applicable for XML documents such as plain XML, SVG and XUL etc.
CSS enables the separation of document content from document presentation including elements such as layout, color and fonts. This separation improves the performance of the webpages as it improves content accessibility providing more flexibility and control in specification of the presentation characteristics. This particular factor alone enables webpages to share formatting and reduces complexity of the structure of the program employed in the document. What CSS essentially does is allows markup language documents to be presented in different styles appropriate to different rendering methods. It allows authors to link their markup language to a CSS style sheet while allowing viewers or readers use different style sheet to read the same document. It incorporates compatibility feature in to the entire system between readers and developers.
CSS also has a priority scheme to determine which style sheet rules applies if more than one rule matches against a particular element of the document. Priorities are calculated and assigned accordingly to rules so that results become predictable.
How does CSS help your website as well as act as a tool for search engine optimization:
CSS controls the appearance of the contents of a webpage and thus in turn portrays your website in a much more efficient and good looking way. It makes your website more readable and attractive than following traditional methods. It makes the website look stylish, attractive and incorporates better readability for viewers. It gives the designer greater flexibility and control over the documents he/she is designing. It gives better precision which allows positioning of layouts to be more specific in terms of specific fonts and styles. What it eventually does to your website is listed below:
Easy maintenance of website
Easier ways to make updates and editing
Makes code lighter, cleaner and efficient performance wise.
Because of these incredible features it brings in to the world of websites, it also enables search engine optimization and thus any website created using CSS style sheets is eventually bound to have some benefits in terms of search engine optimization. These benefits are listed below:
Increases the accuracy of the indexing of the webpages.
Makes your website pretty easy to access
The download speed of the website is quickened
Enables cross browser compatibility.
As a result of these incredible features achieved via CSS scripting language, most websites are created using CSS scripting language. Many web developing companies and SEO firms all around the world tends to prefer CSS language for their documents in order to give a better performance and develop one's business as well.
The downside of CSS language:
CSS is a wonderful scripting language that creates a wonderful platform for websites. However, CSS do have its downside as well thanks to spammers and hackers around the world. They have made use of CSS technology for their own benefits and the betterment of their own websites at the cost of other genuine websites. They have led to a revolution among the internet world known as CSS spam.
Facts about CSS spam:
Nowadays almost many webmasters make use of CSS language to develop their websites. They tend to hide certain texts and links in the CSS code that is not visible to the human web surfers, to manipulate search engine algorithms to get a better ranking for their website.
How does CSS spam works and how it manipulates search engines?
CSS allows developers to specify the location of a webpage element in a web browser. As an expert I have come across many developers creating keyword rich texts in a CSS element that is not visible to the human surfers.
The CSS elements look like a normal part of the webpage in the eyes of the search engines. As this particular element is enriched with keywords search engines are led to misunderstand that the webpage is relevant to the keywords mentioned in that text or content.
CSS largely deals with the appearance of a webpage. It enriches the fonts and colors and applies a style to the markup language making the webpage look more attractive and presentable. It overrides the markup language code with the style sheet already defined code. As result it enables developers to hide certain texts or links from the webpage. Every developer knows that keywords play a crucial role in the webpage when it comes to rankings. At the same time they are also aware that keyword stuffing is considered as a spam and pushes down their webpage ranking if such practices are found. So eventually they can hide whatever they want to improve their website rankings and at the same time perform search engine optimization manipulating search engines not allowing them to figure out spam features present in the document. The same things hold to backlinks as well. The backlinks are present in the code but not at the website which manipulates the search engines algorithms to index the webpages and give them a better ranking as well.
Similarly a developer can incorporate several backlinks to his/her website and hide it from the viewers of the website. At the same time automated crawlers and spiders identify the webpages to be enriched with backlinks, sufficient amount of keywords, relevant contents and thus giving a better rating to the websites.
Spammers and hackers predominantly do the same things. As a result I have come across situations where more than 6 spammer sites have been displayed in top 10 result sets pertaining to a search phrase. The site seems to portray an image where it has sufficient backlinks, derives more traffic, contents are relevant to the keywords with sufficient amount of them present in the document while there are few more being hidden within the document.
Why one must avoid performing CSS spam:
After years of experience search engines are pretty aware of various spam techniques employed by spammers and hackers to manipulate search engines and to get a better ranking for their websites. This in turn brings in more profits and business for them at the cost of other genuine websites giving a headache to many website owners, SEO firms and other web developing companies. Simultaneously they also amalgamate the efficiency of search engines in providing valid result sets. If 6 out of the top 10 websites produced in the result set pertaining to a search text, obviously the viewer will get annoyed. It also defeats the purpose of the search engines.
CSS spam techniques only leads to short term results. As a result a website employing such tactics will do well eventually until it has been identified for performing such practices. Famous search engines such as Google can identify CSS spam. As an expert in the SEO field I have come across websites having hidden texts and links but still look fine in front of the viewer's eyes. Google have identified such websites and have dropped them in their rankings. Much worse, such sites have also been banned for cheating search engines.
It doesn't matter whether you employ CSS spam techniques or other blackhat SEO techniques to manipulate search engines. If your website is identified to be involved in such practices, immediately it will be banned either ways.
So while you develop your website, it is very important that you see to it that your website is spam free. Websites gets banned mainly due to spam. Never hide texts or links as an optimizing strategy to manipulate search engines. Eventually you are bound to get caught and your website will be banned by search engines.
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Screen Shots |
The above screenshot highlights a spam technique using CSS where the font color is made "white" as the background and the size is also reduced to 1pt so that the content added is not visible.
The below mentioned image is an example of css source code where two spammy pharmacy links are added to the code in the comment section.
The below image is a screen shot from of a site opened in internet explorer where the CSS is disabled, and the two spam links embedded in the code are visible now. These two links redirect the user to the same site.
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Source Code |
In the above particular code, the background color is the same as the color element of the "h1" tag. As a result whatever text is given within the "h1" tag will be hidden as the background color of the webpage is the same as the header text. This particular setup is given within the "style" tag which applies CSS to the HTML code and overrides the "h1" contents.
In this format, though the background color and color element has different values, the text within the paragraph described by the "p" tag will not be displayed. Primarily it is because of the fact that within the "style" tag where a description of how the text has to appear has been given, the display element is employed and it has been assigned a 'none' value.
As a result the text eventually wouldn't be displayed. They can also make use of CSS style sheet to override a document and make the texts look smaller making it difficult for those particular texts to be found by the naked eye. For example, a text defined under "h1" tag appears quite huge.
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Working Examples |
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References |
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Other sites that refer to the same manipulation tactic are as follows |