I find it quite helpful to think of "moving closer to the 'gray area'" as "raising your spamminess profile" or, in more google-speak, "lowering your quality score".

I think there are two implications of this. First, there's a real risk involved in using any of these "gray" tactics, as it makes sense to me to assume that the scoring is cumulative, and we don't know where the edge is (oh, and the edge may change!).

Second, there may be (now, or in the future) some graduated "penalty" (or "downward adjustment") applied based on your score. OK, calling it a penalty is probably grounds for argument. But doesn't it make sense that such a score could be used as part of the ranking algorithm?

IMHO, the bottom line is this: we don't know what all of the scoring criteria are, so we don't know what a site's score is. But we have strong hints that things like using CSS to hide text may well count against us and move us closer to an edge that we don't want to be near. Since this *is* something we can control, we should avoid it.

Very interesting. I have been debating this issue back and forth with myself for a while. This technique if used property can be good for visitors, search engines, and SEOs ;)

IMHO, the bottom line is this: we don't know what all of the scoring criteria are, so we don't know what a site's score is. But we have strong hints that things like using CSS to hide text may well count against us and move us closer to an edge that we don't want to be near. Since this *is* something we can control, we should avoid it.

Actually, we have no evidence whatsoever of Google evaluating hidden text algorithmically, and plenty of evidence suggesting otherwise. It appears that these things only come into play during a manual (visual) inspection (as in, if someone reports your for spamming), and in such cases it should be obvious what the intent is. I honestly wouldn't worry about that sort of thing affecting any type of trust or quality scores at this point. There are many valid reasons for doing this.

I think Susan explained it well. If your logo is "Sunset Pools" and you have the words "sunset pools" and you use something akin to sIFR to show those words with the logo/image off, that will probably be fine. If however you name your business "Matt's Cheap Viagra Online for Discount Buying" or keyword-stuff a bunch of keywords that aren't in the logo, that's a Bad Idea.

Personally, I prefer an alt/title tag on an image if you want to be 100% conservative.

Thank you Matt.

Does "Matt's Cheap Viagra Online for Discount Buying" is a perfectly fine alt tag? ;-)

Just kidding.

So Matt, are you confirming the fact that as long as your intentions are not aimed at keyword stuffing or other kinds of misleading tactics, you should be fine? That the algo isn't as blind as "{text-in-place-of-image}==={spam}"?