Honeypot Captcha - rated as "cloaked content"?

[Troteclaser]

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.aspx

Any 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

[baptisteplace]

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 !

[Troteclaser]

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.

[KeriMorgret]

Thomas, double-check if that stat is for users without Java, or users without javascript.

[Troteclaser]

Hi Keri,

Those are users without Java-Support. 
Does that mean that Java Script is no issue then?

[caseyhen]

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

[Troteclaser]

Hey Casey,

Thanks for the reply. Will have this tested soon. Really looking forward to getting rid of that captcha.

Regards,

Thomas

[Troteclaser]

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.