Re: Tracking and Looksmart

From: Alexis D. Gutzman <alexisg_at_marketingsherpa.com>
Date: Wed 24 Jul 2002 09:55:42 -0500

"Mark Bishop" wrote:

> <h5><a href="crawler_mywebsite.html"><img src="clearpixel1.gif" height="1"
> width="1" border="0" alt="Description Here"></h5></a>

I would not recommend you use the code below. I would specifically recommend
that you NOT SET the height and width parameters for your clear gif. Some
SEs consider the use of clear gifs to be spamming -- showing them anything
the user does not see --, including Google (as of May, when I last
interviewed them on this topic).

HTML will work just fine without any height and width parameters, although
pages do load more nicely when the height and width are specified (for
larger images). HOWEVER, if you name the image clearpixel1.gif, and tell the
spider that it's a 1x1 image, then if they are looking for this, you are a
spammer. I would suggest, instead, that you call the image something related
to the keywords of the site and that you leave the height and width
parameters off. Let the spider follow the link because it thinks you are
displaying a page of *content*.

I would also suggest that you put the clear gif at the very bottom of the
page (say, next to your copyright) so that on some browsers, such as
Netscape, which will sometimes put a gray border even around images that are
set with border=0, the strange empty gray box is out of the way.

Regards,
Alexis
Author, _The HTML 4 Bible, 1st Ed._ (way back in '98)
---
Alexis D. Gutzman, Managing Editor
MarketingSherpa's Knowledge Store
http://sherpastore.com <- SEO Guide now on sale!





Received on Wed Jul 24 2002 - 09:55:42 CDT