Sites with hidden links to deceive Google, FullPress analyzes a case to fight spam

I had sensed from the start that something was fishy. Finding in Italy a website, even of an SEO agency (companies specializing in website optimization for search engines using legitimate techniques but some violate Google’s policies) that had a PageRank 8 is a desperate search. Yet. When high-level SEO companies are discussed in our country, one almost always thinks of SEMS, Web Ranking, AdMaiora, TSW, just to name the first that come to mind.The company whose site has a PageRank 8 I had never heard of. And I attend numerous seminars, conferences, and industry events.This little-known site even has the same PageRank as Corriere.it and Repubblica.it and even better than Rai, Mediaset and Sky (PageRank 7) despite having only 97 pages indexed by Google.This anomaly triggered a red alert that led me to investigate.

Hidden links on the page
The site I analyzed “simply” has hidden links in the page’s HTML, so they are not shown to the user but only to the search engine. An illicit technique which, to be honest, I thought had been eradicated over time thanks to Google’s constant updates and Mountain View’s fight against spam. Instead, based on the number of sites I discovered belonging to two SEO agencies (as they declare themselves) things are not like that. For those outside the industry, Google rewards with better rankings sites that obtain inbound links “spontaneously.” Here two things stand out: the lack of spontaneity and hidden links. In this case, two points of Google’s policy are violated (link exchange or selling links and hidden text, therefore spam).But why does the site hide the links?Simple. Because a Quality Rater (a person delegated by Google, not an algorithm, appointed to manually check a site) would immediately notice a non-spontaneous link placed on the page. Often, for example, these links are found on a column of the site and not in the context of a text. In these cases, the site would be manually penalized or even banned from Google’s index.

No action from Google
What is strange is that no one has reported such an irregularity to Google and that no Quality Rater has noticed such a high PageRank, which points out, without needing to rely on scientific calculations, an anomaly. Perhaps precisely because the site is little known, it has been ignored. The links present on this site are outbound, but just follow the destination of the hidden links to understand where they end up. Looking at the HTML code with any browser, you immediately notice that other links are present on the recipient sites and so on, forming chains of hidden links intertwined with each other. Clearly, the agency’s own site also receives links from satellite sites and so the PageRank rises without having to work to get better positions. In my research, I discovered a site that, on its homepage, has over 50 hidden links disguised as a 1-pixel image. Webmasters and technical people understand what I am referring to. However, I find it very strange that with the most important keyword the site does not rank in the SERPs. It might be that Google has penalized the site in the SERPs without affecting the PageRank. The agency’s clients’ sites, on the other hand, seem not to have had any penalty yet.

The agency’s network from hidden links

Certainly, if the links are hidden, I wonder how a network member receives money for a click on a link that no user can see?

Google’s anti-spam and sold links report
Google, for its part, suggests reporting these “anomalies” and especially these spam actions (hidden links are spam techniques) with two forms provided anonymously or via Webmaster Tools:

1)     Form to report spam to Google
2)     Form to report link buying and selling to Google 

I often read in various places on the Web about Google’s delays in taking action following reports. When in doubt, it is always good to report, because the more we report, the more we hope the Web can free itself from these actors whom the Internet can easily do without.

In this case I made my report to Google. On behalf of myself and FullPress, I encourage you to do the same in similar situations. If you have similar cases to propose to the editorial staff, we will be happy to analyze them.

The name of the agency and its website never appeared in this article or in the images. I did not want to protect the agency; I simply avoided bringing traffic and notoriety to those who, because of the use of illicit techniques, deserve no consideration either from users or from search engines, especially Google.