The same goes for Flash textual replacement, and Google's stand on this was the same mixture of humming and hawing, mixed messaging and equivocation until they "officially" gave the green light to sIFR.

And now, more mixed messaging as SEO Rountable reports Google Gives Blessing To Image Replacement Techniques, citing Googler JohnMu. JohnMu's advice is as clear as Cutt's is equivocal.

The two things that gall me about the Cutt's video are: 1) his contention that img alt attributes are equivalent to text replacement (give me a freakin' break) and; 2) that using something like a pixel offset is (quote) "hiding" the content. To this latter point it isn't hiding the content, but exposing it, in the sense that its making it machine-accessible.

Of course, at the core of all this is that Google - reasonably enough - doesn't like spidering text that it can't verify belongs there. In the case of CSS replacement, you'd have to be able to algorithmically compare accessible text with something like image content, and they're clearly not there yet. But I think, and I believe Google thinks, that the value of spidering that text outweighs the spam exploits it opens up. Which is why they go through such contortions in their public messaging on this issue.

Did you ever get any official feedback from Google on this topic?

I know the word "logo" came out of Matt's mouth, but it makes most sense to implement site-wide images using CSS while putting photos that are meant for one or two particular posts using the img tag including alt and title attributes.

Make sense?

—Marcus

If the text isn't visible on the page - you are running a risk.

You can say to yourself: I am doing it for this reason, or that reason, but at the end of the day a bot will come along - see it as hidden text, and that bot/algo is the judge, jury and executioner.

I know it's a tough position for Google to balance for the good guys and the bad guys, but there has to be a better way! It's causing fires that only spit sparks and ash back at them (and their goals).