By Scott Goodyear
Interesting post over at SEO ROI Services called “Does Google Care If A Link Is Underlined? – SEO FAQ“. Gabriel Goldenberg relates a conversation that he had with Google’s Matt Cutts over the use of underlines in links. I know a lot of people wonder about whether tricks like keeping links underlined or not is kosher with Google and generally…
It looks like it depends.
Reading Cutts’ reply, it looks like you are probably OK using or not using an underlined link at your own discretion. It comes down to how the links are interpreted by Google. If you are doing something on your site that seems sketchy and a competitor turns your page or site in for a spam review, a manual review may occur. There was a Google Spam Grader PDF over at Search Bistro (site no longer available) that was of interest. A newer version was mentioned more recently over at Search Engine Land and at SEOBook. I would imagine that some of the points in those documents, whether the docs are real or not, would indeed cause some concern (i.e. a seemingly benign URL in the search result forwards you to an adult URL, hidden text on a page, etc.)
I know some will want to “hide” a few extra links on a page for marketing reasons (i.e. link trades and exchanges). I know that others may have their own design aesthetic that may warrant not using visible links at all. For example, I’ve seen some ARGs and interesting graphic designer portfolios, rock band websites, etc. that choose not to underline all links in their pages so as to force visitors to hunt and peck through their site. Visitors who scour such a site are often rewarded with “easter eggs” – materials such as free ring tones, free wall papers, and the like which are not available from the normal navigation of the site but may be hinted at.
From Goldenberg’s conversation with Cutts, it seems that intent is the key. If there is any doubt that Google may misinterpret your intent, just use normal linking.
Tags: Google, Underlining