14 DAY TRIAL // The Financial Times website has been recently involved in an attempt to trick the Google web crawlers and its hierarchies by using camouflaged links to the Moneysupermarket.com website.
Spam generators are now using hidden web address to spread the unwanted messages; these addresses are written with white on a background of the same color, rendering invisible to the Internet surfer. Still, this information is tracked by the search engines, and since the Financial Times is considered a reliable source according to Google's criteria, placing such a link could result in a significant traffic increase for an underground site.
Although Moneysupermarket.com claims that the site is actually affiliated to Financial Times and so, the connection between the two is somehow explainable, using such a method to promote a site is an unethical practice, linking strategy experts say.
Obviously, obtaining a high ranking from Google is desired by all online companies, but employing hidden and dubious promoting methods might not yield the expected results. In fact, Google has to authority to exclude those sites from the indexing list.