Just like you, I always thought using invisible technorati tags was a good idea since the reader(s) wouldn't be clicking the tag link and thus, leaving the blog (which I really don't want to happen, 'cause I want the reader to stay on your page as long as possible). So I used to do the good old invisible technorati tag, like so: <a href="http://technorati.com/tagname" rel="tag"></a>, leaving out "tagname", which could be any tag. Wise indeed. But for one, the Technorati people don't like it when their tags are hidden. They may tweak things to penalise those who leave out link text for tags by refusing to index their posts properly (it has probably happened already). Two, google and other search engines stop indexing your (and my) pages, thinking we're some kind of spammers. That's not all. There is a third reason why you shouldn't do it. Read on and find out what it is, and the possible ways to get around it.

So, you made it till here. Good. Okay, straight to the point. The third reason is, marks your blog as a "spam blog". You don't want that happening because you'd be losing potential traffic to your blog from the "next blog »" link at the top, in the blogger navbar. Blogger automatically prevents your blog from appearing when someone clicks the "next blog »" link, when your blog is identified as a spam blog. Another possible thing, technorati probably stops pinging your blog (if you've set it to automatic) and if you manually ping your blog, it takes its own time to update it. For eg. if you blogged about Lindsay Lohan's boobs today, add 543657 invisible tags and then manually ping your blog, technorati will only update it after a day or two. I'm not sure about this though, I'd like some citing source on this, if available. Whenever I pinged my blog with invisible tags, it wouldn't get updated for atleast 20+ hours, so I'm guessing it is a possible fourth reason.

Now, the how to's to get around this. There are two ways I know of to get around this. Both of them use CSS. The first method uses a CSS selector to hide the technorati tags. Paste the following code between the <style> and </style> in your template.

.invisible {
display:none;
}

While tagging your blog post(s), simply add a 'class="invisible"' to the technorati tag you copy-paste. For eg. <a href="http://www.tecnorati.com/Lindsay+Lohan's+Boobs" rel="tag" class="invisible">Lindsay Lohan's Boobs</a>

The next method does not actually hide the link, but makes it look as if the technorati tag is part of your blog post by changing the link to resemble the text color of your blog. If you didn't understand that, don't panic. Let me show you an example, 'cause examples are neat.

First, add a a.technorati {
color:black;
text-decoration:none
}

a:hover .technorati {
color:black;
text-decoration:none
}

in between the <style> and </style> part of your template. Make sure color matches the color of the font you are using for your blog text. Now, that would look like this in a sentence:

...have you seen <a href="http://www.technorati.com/Lindsay+Lohan's+Boobs" rel="tag" class="technorati">Lindsay Lohan's boobs</a>? They are sexy!

Because you added a class="technorati", the link actually appears like normal text. But this method requires you be a little creative in choosing your tags, and smartly adding them in the right places (instead of adding them at one place, mostly at the bottom after the blog post) so it would appear as part of a sentence. If you're too lazy to think, the first method would do just fine. But I can't guarantee your blog would not still be marked as a spam blog. It depends on whether the technorati and Blogger bots read your formatted page, or the page source code. I actually prefer displaying the technorati tags from now on, in small text links under each post. Any doubts, comments, ideas? Found errors in this post? Feel free to comment and let me know.


*** If you have to fill in a word verification form when you make a blog post, your blog post is a "spam blog". Click here to find out how to prove your blog isn't a spam blog.

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