If a spider could read the alt attribute, don't you think they could read the href attribute? Alt="j...@smith.com" or href="mailto:j...@smith.com";
It doesn't matter where you put the valid email address, the spiders will find it. However, messing with images will just make it more difficult on the user. You could encode the link. <a href="mailto:joe@smith.com";>joe@smith.com</a> I'm not sure if that technique still works. Spiders should be smart enough to decode the text. You could also use javascript to turn something like this mailto:joeB*Dsmith.com into mailto:j...@smith.com, but then your site is dependent on javascript. So you need to weigh the needs of your javascript-disabled users with avoiding spam. Ted -----Original Message----- From: li...@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:li...@webstandardsgroup.org] On Behalf Of cat soul Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 4:04 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] alt text on email graphic The technique of using a graphic to communicate an email address in order to foil spiders or harvesters, like this: bob at domain dot com seems pretty clever. Yet, when I think about the alt text for that image, I'm wondering if that alt text could be exploited by spiders... would it be good to handle it this way: <img src="mail.gif" alt="bob's email"> and leave it at that? for those who really use alt text, might they be short changed by not seeing or hearing: <img src="mail.gif" alt="bob at domain dot com"> or am I making mountains out of molehills here? cs ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
