Google Webmaster Tools Keywords Report Showing Blank Lines?

A webmaster reported in a Google Webmaster Help thread that in his Google Webmaster Tools Keyword report, he noticed that Google is displaying a blank line as one of his more popular keywords used within the site.

The blank line is [_______________] and he has no idea why it shows up not just once, but twice. The first one is in the second most popular keyword used on the site and the second one is the eleventh most popular keyword used on the site. If you think about it, the underline or line is weird, but even if it technically was a keyword, wouldn't it be the same keyword (i.e. only show up once in the keyword list)?

In any event, the webmaster posted a screen shot in the thread - because honestly, I thought he was on crack or something. Here it is:

Why is this showing up? No idea! In fact, if you search for the line using a site command, nothing comes up.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at September 9, 2009 8:36 AM Comments (3)

Comments

This isn't new.. Has been happening for a long long time..

Vbulletin has the dashes just above the sig.. I've seen it in serp spinets 1000's of times to..

Posted by gabs at September 9, 2009 11:55

Are you telling me that I missed something related to Google? ;-)

Posted by Barry Schwartz at September 9, 2009 12:02

Hi Barry, try searching for three underlines less than what you have in your search query -- you'll see that it's coming from the site. This generally won't change anything, but you could avoid it by using "u" HTML tags (or setting a bottom-border via CSS) instead of using the underline-character.

Posted by JohnMu at September 10, 2009 02:26

Google Webmaster Tools Keywords Report Showing Blank Lines?

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