As reported by Danny and Barry, Volkswagen was busted for using hidden text on their homepage. Instead of creating a search friendly alternative to their unindexable flash homepage, they tried to use a hidden div tag:
<div class=”invisibleContent”>Volkswagen of America presents U.S. vehicle information, pricing, incentives, deals, comparisons on Eos, GTI, Jetta, New Beetle, New Beetle Convertible, Passat, Passat Wagon, Touareg, Rabbit, R32 and the GLI with links to VW dealers, owner information, Volkswagen merchandise, and VW accessories. homepage, volkswagen, volkswagon, vw.com, home, landing, top, volkswagen.com, home page, home, top, back, VWofAmerica, Volkswagen of America, Volkswagon of America, VWoA, VWofA, volkswagon.com</div>
What’s funny is they didn’t even try to hide it, as they named the div “invisibleContent”. It didn’t take Google long to spot this and lay down the law. VW admitted they were in the wrong and quickly remedied the problem by moving the invisible text to the meta description.
The current page <i>disallows caching</i>. This is an interesting development: VW doesn’t want search engines to cache its pages? They go from spamming for dollars to blocking indexing spiders?
their homepage code:
<meta http-equiv=”Pragma” content=”no-cache” />
Check back in 1 week to see if VW is still disallowing cached pages.
May 8th, 2007 at 9:39 am
[...] search terms are now properly placed under the Meta description in the page. Oh yeah, the pages now block web crawlers from caching the pages – a total 180 degree turn from spamming search engines with hidden terms. [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 9:39 am
[...] search terms are now properly placed under the Meta description in the page. Oh yeah, the pages now block web crawlers from caching the pages – a total 180 degree turn from spamming search engines with hidden terms. [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 9:54 am
[...] search terms are now properly placed under the Meta description in the page. Oh yeah, the pages now block web crawlers from caching the pages – a total 180 degree turn from spamming search engines with hidden terms. [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
[...] para Volkswagen, tuvieron una conversación, y ahora todo está como debería, bloqueando incluso las arañas para evitar que cacheen las páginas. Exactamente todo lo contrario [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
[...] search terms are now properly placed under the Meta description in the page. Oh yeah, the pages now block web crawlers from caching the pages – a total 180 degree turn from spamming search engines with hidden terms. [...]
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:08 am
[...] search terms are now properly placed under the Meta description in the page. Oh yeah, the pages now block web crawlers from caching the pages – a total 180 degree turn from spamming search engines with hidden terms. [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
[...] afford not to list highly authoritative well read sites in its index, so large corporations like VW can get away with spamming testing the limits with no fear of being blacklisted. Many people let [...]