The Google Forum

**nkthen** · 06-26-2005, 12:08 PM

My client is asking me to do this:

- Change the entire background black color
- Change the entire text WHITE color

I know that major search engines frowns on WHITE text but I wanted to know if this is still possible because the background will be black in color.

Any advice to make it possible without getting major search engines (esp. Google) to ban my site?

And, any sites you know actually uses white text and still rank high?

**kline11** · 06-27-2005, 05:14 PM

This is just fine. The problem is when the text and the background are the same color. I used to have my site SearchBliss (in 2001) black with bright colored text, and it ranked fine. It justed looked bad (too dark and juvenille). So I changed the whole site in 2002. I guess it all depends on what the site is about and the average age of your target visitor, but a black site isn't always the best idea (unless it is about Star Wars or something similar).

**shabbirbhimani** · 06-27-2005, 11:02 PM

The colour combination you are going should not be a problem with the Search Engines but remember that the site is not only for SE but I myself dont prefer reading anything in black background with shiny text because it irritates reading from such a background. Many others may think this way also. Best bet would be to setup a poll on your site and let your visitors say if they like the new index page.

**Guerrilla** · 06-28-2005, 06:28 AM

set the background colour in an external css file or use a giff the colour you want as the background instead of setting colour value in HTML. Not something i would do personally but i dont think the SE have worked out a way to stop this one yet (i may be wrong).

**SlitheryImp** · 06-29-2005, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guerrilla

...but i dont think the SE have worked out a way to stop this one yet...

Why would the SE's want to stop this? Seems legit to me...

**Guerrilla** · 06-29-2005, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlitheryImp

Why would the SE's want to stop this? Seems legit to me...

because you are hiding text so that the visitor cant see it but the SE spider does. Same sort of thing as whacking a paragraph in between <noscript></noscript> tags.

This sort of trick can occaisionally be handy but i dont reccommend it as it probably wont be long until it is penalised.

**Guerrilla** · 06-29-2005, 05:05 PM

ignore my previous posts just realised i misread the original question.

To asnswer the question properly my advice would be to set the background colour in the <body> tag and the text colour similarly in a tage on the page and not to use an external css file. This should hopefully make it clear to the SE that the text and BG colour are different which to my knowledge would be the only reason you would get penalised.

Sorry about the confusion.

G

**BEER HEAD**