Removing a footprint

Hey veterans, I am not sure what it means to remove a footprint.(and how) I am pretty sure its important when we are using a template(maybe from TM) Can someone explain why and how.

Thanks in advance.

hydrochloric acid, sharp knife, hot flame should do the trick!

actually i think a footprint is a form of tracking and/or usage of certain scripts/tools etc sometimes done in the form of a callback to a server and the likes - or thats my understanding of it i could be completely wrong though

A footprint is something that is common among a group of sites. It could be image names, pubid (adsense), code patterns, comments, content links (powered by somedomain.com) etc. So if you use the exact same website template for each of your sites, humans or bots could look for a common identifier and either exploit it or penalize you for it. This is really important when you are mass producing sites with tools like YACG.

To avoid footprints, try to make your sites as original as possible.

ok i think i understand better. I thought it was used to hide the fact i got a template from somewhere other than from the seller themselves.

I like to use open source templates and WP themes, especially for small (5 to 20 pages) affiliate sites. To avoid leaving a large footprint I always change up the div and class names, rename the images, basically anything I can alter in the HTML and CSS coding to make it appear different to bots (or even humans) without messing up the template I will.