IS this sneered at by Search Engines?

[aljames]

I have added some key phrases to my index page at the bottom - www.aljames.co.uk

My question is, will search engines penalise me in any way for changing the text colour to light grey? Or ideally could I change the words to white so that they are invisible to viewers but the words are techincally still there? I'm not sure how search engines work and dont want to lessen my page rank in any way if I am breaking their rules?

Two cents would be appreciated.

Cheers
Al

[DaveLegg]

The words you added are totally out of context. Making them white would definately loose you points with google, and just having them there could do aswell. Google prefers text that is in context.

[Waldovia PM]

Originally Posted by DaveLegg

Making them white would definately loose you points with google, and just having them there could do aswell. Google prefers text that is in context.

So what you're saying is, Google sees white text and then looks to see what the background colour is, either in the HTML or CSS?
I don't think Google is going to interogate the design to that degree.

[DaveLegg]

Check google's guidelines here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

One of the things they list is:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

[WhiskyFudge]

Never underestimate the intelligence of googles bot's (or any other search engine bots for that matter).

Al - in my opinion what you've done is not a good idea. If you want better ratings then your meta tags need to be well produced, and the content needs to be full of keywords whilst still producing quality reading.

[aljames]

Hello everyone. THanks for that feedback which is great - I think I'll err on the side of caution and remove those key phrases right away. I'm a google rank 4 and dont want to mess it up.

CHeers
Al