On my daily or so read of Matt Cutts, he tries to note what hidden text would equate to on television:

Now, I understand what he is trying to get at (although I believe having a millisecond subliminal ad would have been a better comparison), but I believe the best comparison would be invisible ink that you can write on a newspaper for coded messages. TV does not have the ability for this (although you could put in backward speeches, but that’s another thing entirely).

I’m more interested in the concept of “visible, but hidden” text.

Quoting a long ago Matt Cutts’s post:

If you’re going to hide text, doing “#EEEEEE” instead of solid white isn’t really an improvement. In fact, it can look worse, as if you’re trying to choose a text color that won’t be exactly the same as the background color, but still won’t be noticed.

Now, keyword spamming is a violation of Google’s TOS and I have no disagreement there, but the nearly hidden text is a legit and actual improvement. But, for fun’s sake let’s play a game of what you’re trying to hide in a sea of other things based on it not really being an improvement:

  • Privacy statements and EULAs: They’re long, visible, but conveniently placed at the bottom of the page usually in smaller font that leads to a page filled with tons and tons of legalese text. These are not usually for people to read and understand (it took a month for one person to find a $1,000 prize for actually reading a EULA hidden within a test EULA).
  • Text between images (aka ‘captions’): Helpful, but if you’re quickly browsing through tons of images, text quickly gets ‘hidden’ from users.
  • Text advertisements within long articles: Ever read an article, following links to check their sources, and click on an advertisement (usually Google’s) by mistake?
  • Scrolling text: Text shows up, then disappears, then shows up, and then disappears. Kinda annoying.

The point? There are legitimate uses for the variety of ways to show text, whether it’s subtle colors for better design, legal issues of privacy and EULAs, explanations for a family vacation, relevant text ads, and breaking news. The intent of why you display information is more important than the how (or at least should be).