Last year I discovered a hidden link on a client site pointing to a template site with a PageRank 9. Wow! How did they get that. After some digging around I found the reason. They sold templates with hidden links back to their site. It could be a stupid mistake from their developer, so I am not outing the company. One year later they still got a decent toolbar PageRank 9 and no Google penalty.
Let’s look at the links
As you can see they have lots of links, not just from hidden links. This could make it hard for Google to pick up on the hidden links.
They have 3234 root domains using templates with hidden links. That is a lot of links!
High-profile clients
Many of the domains are high-profile and trusted sites. I found hidden links on sites like a Nobel winner and a Prime Minister. They have 6% of their backlinks from .edu domains.
Link hidden inside a H1 with a div
The code looks strange, right? Not sure why they did this if they didn’t know hidden links was against Google quality guidelines. Feel free to comment on this.
Takeaways from this case
Always look closely on any template or plugin you use. If you are going to reuse it for clients make sure there are no hidden links or other sneaky stuff going on in the code. Hidden links can work and give you a toolbar PageRank 9. It would be interesting to know what Matt Cutts and his team thinks about this..
Hidden links are tricky – many people throw wordpress templates up with them built in at bottom where you can remove but few do… widgets are another area where you can do this and even be okay with google so long as the link is right to the topic of the widget and where you are landing the link
good stuff mate
Wow… I havent seen many PR9 sites that werent universities or high-profile services such as twitter or facebook. And now a website template service gets it using hidden links?
Anyway… I came here from @yoast’s tweet. Will def comeback.
That is insane. Makes you wonder what else is lurking inside of free templates people offer.
Yes, indeed.
Good find … the issue is how long will it last? Or is it really passing equity? It may appear to be, but it may not as well.
Hard to tell for sure. It appears to have been working for at least a year. I will keep an eye on their rankings and «pagerank».
Free WordPress templates are notorious for hidden links. Most are encode with Code Base 64 so the unfamiliar would not actually see a link within the actual code.
Is the site *removed*.com ?
Someone should probably submit a spam report…
What do you mean, it’s awesome.. great business model 🙂
😀
Haha. Great business model indeed. Maybe we should buy some links? I would seriously expect Google to have picked up on that, especially with it being a hidden H1.
This is nothing compared to the scourge of hacked links out there. Millions upon millions!
True that.
https://www.google.com/search?pws=0&q=site:.edu+viagra&hl=en
Can you share how old is the site? Or at least if you think they have been receiving these (hidden) links for +4 years?
It’s around 7 years old. I think it has been working for 2+ years, but know it has for at least 1 year.
Update: Looks like they still got PageRank 9 and ranking like before. Below is a list of the PageRank for this URL via SEOmoz Historical PageRank Tool:
PageRank 9 reported on 01/24/2011
PageRank 9 reported on 03/02/2010
PageRank 9 reported on 02/22/2010
PageRank 9 reported on 10/23/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 08/26/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 08/26/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 05/22/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 05/22/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 05/06/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 04/09/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 04/08/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 03/28/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 03/23/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 03/23/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 02/18/2009
PageRank 9 reported on 02/18/2009
PageRank 8 reported on 04/03/2008
PageRank 7 reported on 10/11/2007
PageRank 7 reported on 08/09/2007
I guess Google don’t care unless it’s on New York Times or Search Engine Land.
Nice find.
A lot of the ‘share this’ and ‘add to’ social bookmarking plugins also have high PR – 8/9, as they all have do follow links within the plugins. Great way to build (and leak) PR!
True that:)
So you mean the hidden links are not visible on the template design? Designers create templates with links at the bottom and they give the templates away for free for that reason, to build backlinks.
Yes, it’s only visible in the source code. They used width = 0px and height = 0px. Also it’s not at the bottom.
The code:
Its not ____.com? I find it strange that they have that kind of PR.
It is.