Hidden links on FT.com to Moneysupermarket
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CEO at Econsultancy
12 June 2005 14:50pm
Can it be that the FT.com, one of the web’s most respected brands, is taking part in highly unethical SEO practice?
It certainly looks like it.
While Ken McGaffin was doing some research for a client, he discovered over 100 hidden links pointing from FT.com to Moneysupermarket.com all of which are clearly in breach of Google’s guidelines.
You can read the full story, see screen shots and live link to the FT in Ken’s article:
http://www.linkingmatters.com/hidden-links-financial-times.html
Certainly at the time of posting this those dodgy links are all still there.
Speaking to Ken, they have apparently been there for 5 weeks too!
All in all I find it very hard to believe that the FT and Moneysupermarket don’t know exactly what is going on, and this is very poor practice.
My recommendation would be a couple of months de-listing from Google’s index... that should make the point.
Watch this space...
Ashley
CEO at Econsultancy
13 June 2005 10:56am
Seems like the FT have now at least turned those white-on-white links black - http://news.ft.com/cms/65b4b964-84e0-11d9-a172-00000e2511c8.html
There is, of course, still evidence of their mistake e.g. Google's cache of the page as indexed on 2nd June.
If you look at the source code on that cached page you see two links, one visible and the other not, coded as follows
<a class="allWide" href="http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk" target="_top">Investors Chronicle</a>
<a class="allWhiteNU" href="http://www.moneysupermarket.com/" target="_blank">moneysupermarket.com</a>
Ashley
Web Consultant at architxt.net
14 June 2005 11:48am
I wonder what NU stands for in class="allWhiteNU".
C.O.O. at Couturelab Limited
14 June 2005 16:48pm
A charitable view could be that Moneysupermarket had a commercial deal with FT.com which allowed for x amount of traffic each month (or given period) , once traffic reached volume of more than x, the FT might have the right to remove link until the next payment starts, and someone in FT tech dept thought that making links invisible rather than removing it would make it easier to restore when next period starts.....
or a non charitable version would be .......
CEO at Segala
15 June 2005 00:17am
I’m highlighting this possibility because the agency I used for our brand creation and web design incorporated hidden links back to their website even though I specifically requested that no mention of their site be included on ours, as that would have indirectly endorsed their capability within the field of accessibility. The links were so well incorporated into the site that it took hours for one of our developers to remove them - it wasn’t a simple case of hitting the delete key as that would have resulted in the entire design breaking up. Very smart coding was a comment made by the developer but I was seriously unimpressed by them. I’m not saying FT.com has been subjected to an equally unscrupulous agency, but it is possible…
If what I’m suggesting has actually happened (however unlikely), then it won’t be as simple has deleting every mention of that url.