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Google has provided advice for website designers on how to make sure their site is correctly displayed on the company’s new browser, Chrome.

Maile Ohye, a developer for Google writing on the Webmaster Central blog, recommends using HTML rather than AJAX coding, as this will help search engines find the site.

And to achieve a uniform look across all browsers, validated code should be used, while designers should make sure that they have tested the usability of the site and not just its aesthetics.

‘When your site renders poorly or is difficult to use on many browsers you risk losing your visitors’ interest and, if you’re running a monetised site, perhaps their business,’ she wrote.

‘It’s possible that the clickable area of a linked image or button may change from browser to browser.’

According to research firm Net Applications, Chrome has a one per cent share of the browser market.

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Black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) is becoming less frequent, the head of spam abuse at Google has said.

Matt Cutts told cnet news that he felt legitimate, or white hat, SEO techniques were gradually becoming the norm and this was in part because of Google’s anti-spam policies.

The search engine uses algorithms to deal with particular automated spam-creating techniques but also takes manual action when required.

‘We see the majority of the trend is people trying to find legitimate ways [to promote their sites],’ Mr Cutts told the website.

‘The hope is you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.’

Google advises website designers to use its guidelines on how to avoid becoming a black hat SEO practitioner.

However, Gab Goldenberg, an SEO professional, recently put forward the argument that black hat SEO was not ‘in and of itself unethical’.

He said that it only became so when it ’significantly and negatively affects humans’, rather than an abstract mathematical system.

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