So it appears that, short of a set of stone tablets carried down from the hills of Mountain View, we do have a fairly clear answer. Using CSS image replacement in a responsible way, where the image truthfully represents the content it’s replacing, is safe to use. The simple act of hiding text from users is not enough to get your site banned from Google’s index.
I think most of us have always suspected non-shady use of image replacement would be fine by Google, but now we (mostly) know for sure. Thanks, Dave! Visit site »