Honeypot Captcha - rated as "cloaked content"?
-
Hi guys,
in order to get rid of our very old-school captcha on our contact form at troteclaser.com, we would like to use a honeypot captcha.
The idea is to add a field that is hidden to human visitors but likely to be filled in by spam-bots. In this way we can sort our all those spam contact requests.
More details on "honeypot captchas":
http://haacked.com/archive/2007/09/11/honeypot-captcha.aspxAny idea if this single cloaked field will have negative SEO-impacts? Or is there another alternative to keep out those spam-bots?
Greets from Austria,
Thomas -
Just in case anyone stumbles across this topic:
We started using honeypot captchas in 2011 and it really paid off. Not only because we got rid of the old captchas, but also because they are keeping out 99,99% of all bot inquiries or spam.
-
Hey Casey,
Thanks for the reply. Will have this tested soon. Really looking forward to getting rid of that captcha.
Regards,
Thomas
-
Hi Thomas,
I've done some studies on this and you will be fine using this technique and Google won't give you any problems doing it. Check out my post on the Honeypot Technique, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion-rates. The technique works quite well blocking about 98% of SPAM.
Casey
-
Hi Keri,
Those are users without Java-Support.
Does that mean that Java Script is no issue then? -
Thomas, double-check if that stat is for users without Java, or users without javascript.
-
Good point, thanks.
As 15% of our visitors don't have Java, this won't work out
Actually we're trying to get rid of the captcha to increase our CR, that's why the "honeypot" version is very appealing.
-
You won't get any SEO impact, think about it for all the form with JS interaction on big sites
One easy solution is to use ajax post of the form only, very effective BUT you won't be able to get contact from visitors without javascript enabled. Maybe a good alternative.
Otherwise, you can use Recaptcha : http://www.google.com/recaptcha
This is free and easy to setup, works well with bots and access to everyone !
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Site:" without Homepage, Why?
Hi all, When I put "site:bettingexchange.it" on www.google.it in the SERP it's NOT showed the HOMEPAGE "bettingexchange.it". Google starts with other pages lik "bettingexchange.it/siti/". It's the first time I see something like this, How is it possibile?
Technical SEO | | bettingexchange
How can I reintroduce the homepage?0 -
If content is at the bottom of the page but the code is at the top, does Google know that the content is at the bottom?
I'm working on creating content for top category pages for an ecommerce site. I can put them under the left hand navigation bar, and that content would be near the top in the code. I can also put the content at the bottom center, where it would look nicer but be at the bottom of the code. What's the better approach? Thanks for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Duplicate Content Issue
SEOMOZ is giving me a number of duplicate content warnings related to pages that have an email a friend and/or email when back in stock versions of a page. I thought I had those blocked via my robots.txt file which contains the following... Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp Disallow: /Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp I had thought that the robot.txt file would solve this issue. Anyone have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | WaterSkis.com0 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Cn I use SEOMOZ to find "Bad Links"
We were hit by the Penguin update and I am told it make be because of "Bad Links", but no one can seem to tell me how to find them. We never buy links, and in fact the only links I know about are those from paid affiliates through shareasale - and these affiliates are paid based on performance, not links. 1. Does anyone know how to figure out what links are bad? 2. Once I know, how do I get them to stop linking to my site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Why crawl error "title missing or empty" when there is already "title and meta desciption" in place?
I've been getting 73 "title missing or empty" warnings from SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic. This is weird as I've installed yoast wordpress seo plugin and all posts do have title and meta description. But why the results here.. can anyone explain what's happening? Thanks!! Here are some of the links that are listed with "title missing, empty". Almost all our blog posts were listed there. http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-here-for-good/ http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-socially-awkward/ MaeM3.png TLcD8.png
Technical SEO | | JasonDGreat0 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | | ShaMenz0