Search Engine Optimization and Submission Posts
<snip>Using clear gifs for tracking
Does this sound (1 like a good idea and 2) will it get us in trouble with the
search engines? I know that back then the spammy old days clear gifs and text
the same color as the background were used to stuff keywords. I want to make
sure we are in the clear on this. Any thoughts out there?
</snip>
The testing I would do is:
1. test to see if images turned off will affect tracking
2. test tracking for text only browsers (often Unix based)
Even if either is negative I wouldn't be too concerned
since those settings and browsers aren't as prevalent as
they were 4-5 yrs. ago. It would at least enable a guess
at traffic skew.
If the pixel contains no data then there should be no
problems with spam detection provided it isn't in a
a href= anchor (invisible link), if it is then you are
perhaps putting yourself at risk as all SE frown on this.
I say perhaps as I would assume any spam reported to an
engine should allow this since it isn't an attempt to inflate
relevancy. It would still result in an interruption of possibly
a few months but you would I assume get back into the
index at some point.
I am guessing the tracking gif is called from the other server
so you may get a lag on page rendering. I would definitely
put it at the bottom of the page so it wouldn't slow the
loading of the pages. If you have any on load statements
and there is a lag these would be negatively affected as
well.
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