New Google PageRank Algorithm Punishing Web Accessibility?

I just came across an articled entitled [URL=http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=9053]Have Your Google Website Dropped Recently?[/URL]

It appears Google has made a fairly significant change to PageRank, and one bit I found most disturbing was:

[QUOTE]

Hidden text spam seems to be more penalized. While most search engines consider white text on white background spamming, [b]it seems that Google now also recognizes text that is hidden in invisible CSS layers[/b].

[/QUOTE]

So google now reads CSS? Or at least partially? I sent an email to google via their contact form inquiring about this. I’m not sure if Google looks for inline styles, embedded style sheets, or it actually downloads all external style sheets. The latter would seem to be very inefficient for Google and costly in server time and network resources for everyone else.

Now I know why they would do this (because people can spam their pages with hidden text), but many of the sites I’ve coded for work have hidden navigational elements to assist non-graphical browsers in jumping to certain points on a page. Further, we do put some text in layers. Sometimes we replace headings with background images and use a form of image replacement that involves putting text into layers. Several of the sites in our network have dropped, sometimes sharply, in rankings since this came into affect. On the surface, [i]if the above article is correct[/i], sites can get punished for using certain types of design techniques which aid in Web accessibility?

[b]Before you go cry foul to Google…[/b]
I haven’t heard back from them yet, and a number of our sites use a text link ad that [i]may[/i] be caught as text link spam by the Google searchbots. (We’ve since given a 30 day notice to end this advertising contract.) The searchbots may not read all the css properties but may instead look for a few of them, like display: none; and visibility: hidden;

Could this also bring accessible DHTML menus into the realm of “hidden text spam,” including tabbed interfaces, similar to the one published at A List Apart: [url=http://alistapart.com/articles/eatcake]Let Them Eat Cake[/url]?

I’m not sure. I’ll post what Google responds with. In the meantime, has anyone heard more specific information about this PageRank change?

Also in #SEO _↴