You'd think these places would learn but no, they don't. A Google Webmaster Help thread has a webmaster asking about how he can remove the sitelinks from showing up in Google.
What ended up happening is that Google's John Mueller took notice of the hidden links on the footer of his source code.
He then showed the webmaster what was going on with a snap shot of the hidden links. Clearly, this web host is not just a free hosting company but also a company that looks to sell SEO services and page ranking services.
Here are the hidden links:
So now what? Does John Mueller get the Google forces to dig deeper into this hosting/SEO company and press a single button to remove any value they may have noticed from these links or did they simply not count in the first place?
Did those links end up hurting this and the other webmasters?
Lesson, (1) check your source code to make sure the source code is ALL yours and (2) pay for hosting with a legitimate hosting company.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
