Hi There

I am not sure if this is the same "hiding links" to which you refer but this is what I do. I hide my links from visitors with a little extra html code. It actually only hides it in the status bar in the bottom left corner of the screen. It does not affect page rank nor is it considered black hat.

If you read the source code, you can actually see the link. It is not hidden there. But there are a couple reasons I prefer to do this. The first is I notice with some people if they think they are leaving a website, they will not click on the link worried about where it might go. So basically it gives the appearance of staying on your own website. But I do open the links in new windows so they can come back.

The other reason I do it is so people cannot see my long drawn out affiliate ID. It looks much neater to read relevant text than a long string of numbers and letters.

Lastly, I do not know this for sure but it seems to me, it might actually help the website if you use good descriptive tags. Much like alt tags for images and title tags for links, I would think these tags would be beneficial as well.