"hidden text" vs. META tags for robots/search engines

Todd Sellers (todd@p3.net)
Fri, 6 Sep 1996 10:48:49 -0400


I am web content provider, and I've been using the=20
<META NAME=3D"description" CONTENT=3D"...">=20
and=20
<META NAME=3D"keywords" CONTENT=3D"word1 word2 word3 ... wordn">=20
tags to assist robots in indexing my content in search engines. =20

However, I have noticed that some web sites are putting "hidden text" at =
the bottom of their pages with the same information as in the "keywords" =
META tag. For example:

<FONT SIZE=3D-3 color=3D#ffffff> word1 word2 word3 ... wordn </FONT>

(see http://www.industry.net for an example)

I presume they are doing this because the META "keywords" tag doesn't =
cover all robots out
there? Can anybody provide insight to this issue? I don't like the =
idea of this "hidden text" at
the bottom of my pages. Compuserv's browser doesn't handle colored =
text, so it isn't even=20
hidden for those users. I'd prefer not to use this method of "hidden =
text" if I don't have to, but
I don't want to exclude my content from popular search engines either.

Thanks for any information you can provide.

Todd Sellers