Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible
div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as
cloaking.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review. One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both
BMW Germany and
Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices.
[41] Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.
[42
Source :
Search engine optimization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia