Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) has decided to run for Texas governor against incumbent Rick Perry, and her new campaign website contained hidden text that read “rick perry gay.” The resulting flap led to the firing of the Web development firm involved, drew heated responses from Perry’s office, and (perhaps worst of all) saw Hutchison’s campaign website yanked from Google’s search index.
Texas newspapers uncovered the hidden text last week. The “rick perry gay” reference was one of only thousands of phrases tucked into the source code for Hutchison’s site, apparently to help draw search engine traffic.
From Google, just after the Google Basics directory page:
“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.
To fix this problem, review your site for misused keywords. Typically, these will be lists or paragraphs of keywords, often randomly repeated. Check carefully, because keywords can often be in the form of hidden text, or they can be hidden in title tags or alt attributes.
Once you’ve made your changes and are confident that your site no longer violates our guidelines, submit your site for reconsideration.
Ultimately, Google and then Yahoo removed the site from their search indexes because it was loaded with too many search terms. The site’s development firm was ElectionMall, who should have known better.
Via Arstechnica.com
Well, he does spend a lot of time primping to make sure he looks fabulous.
Why doesn’t Google just start ignoring META tags?
It hasn’t been all that long since the big engines started punishing black hat SEO techniques, but I think it’s great they now do. Key word searches are noticeably more straightforward than they were a few years ago (for other reasons as well, but whatever).
And the chances that the web firm thought of those phrases all on there own?
@2 – Google does (pretty much) ignore the meta keywords tag. The other noteworthy meta tag, meta description, is only used to provide a snippet of the page in search results and is not part of any ranking algorithm (as far as anyone knows).
And keyword stuffing hasn’t worked for years. The site would have never competitively ranked for “rick perry gay” on its own. However, now that every media outlet on the planet has linked to the site in articles written about the hidden text, “rick perry gay” will forever be associated with Kay Bailey Hutchison.
The site’s development firm DOES know better, but they don’t fucking care.
I’ve briefly worked with the CEO of electionmall.com on a project. Ravi Singh is sexist and homophobic. The site professes to be very non-partisan, but it’s not. He was a HUGE supporter of Bush’s administration. This was on purpose.