http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003637.html

Is this a new SEO tactic: hide links with CSS to appear as normal text?

I have seen this method used before., however the go back to the fourm here and see that it dates back to 2004!! Rusty is pointing to an old thread of conversations :(-

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=11013

Pd the thread I see is from April 2006... maybe you looked at the join date of the first poster?

OK, so basically the Colgate links do show upon click, and they are just not underlined like good links ought to be. There's no clear black-and-white with cases like these but I'd say if in doubt don't judge badly of the site (there's a German and Latin saying for this... in dubio pro reo).

Mea culpa!! Your correct philipp!!

I have seen this type of linking (not visiable as underline). Jonnyihack also used the same technique for his postings – where a lot of. Secondary linking was not visiable to the naked eye. It only becomes visiable on mouse hovers across the link.

I think that ranking for that site increases as se will find more links. Imho its a self referntial process. Btw how do SE understand that a page is refering to another page under the same uri/site ?? More links mean more juice correct ??

I don't see a problem with this. People can read the text. People can click the "hidden" links if they notice they're there. Just because Colgate have opted to not use underlining styles on these links, does it really matter? I don't think so. Is this spam? Not in my book. It's purely a design choice – albeit a design choice that was undoubtedly chosen for SEO reasons.

Many people choose not to underline links on their websites anyway (which I believe is generally bad usability anyway – except in certain circumstances). Instead, they might use bold, different colors, etc. (The difference, of course, is that you would still be able to identify those links...)