Content in hidden div indexed?

15 years ago

WaNaNaNaNa!

Might have better luck posting these questions in the Web Design or Programming section!

HTML Code:

<html>

<head>

<style type="text/css">
#hidden span {
visibility:hidden;
}

#hidden:hover span {
visibility:visible;
}
</style>

</head>

<body>

<p>PUT THE CAPS UNDER THESE WORDS...</p>
<p>
<div id="hidden"><span>MOUSE OVER THIS STUFF AND IT SHOWS UP! MOUSE OVER THIS STUFF AND IT SHOWS UP!<br>
MOUSE OVER THIS STUFF AND IT SHOWS UP! MOUSE OVER THIS STUFF AND IT SHOWS UP!</span></div>
</p>

</body>

</html>

CHEERS!

Thanks

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scott g
"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."

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Fraggler

15 years ago

He wasn't asking how to do it, Scott. He was asking if the search engines will find it.

aygabtu, I had a quick search and couldn't find anything conclusive. I haven't tried it personally. Using it to benefit SEO is a problem though and is frowned upon from Google. I don't know what the ban process is (manual or automatic) but hidden text should be for usability only, not cloaking.

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3 replies

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paulgl

15 years ago

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

* Using white text on a white background
* Including text behind an image
* Using CSS to hide text
* Setting the font size to 0

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index.

Although css is specifically mentioned, I believe one can just define the
style with the div and not need css to make it hidden.

Either way, it seems it probably would be seen by google, but how what they
do about it is iffy. Would they detect it as being hidden? There's a good chance.
Certainly anything in html could be indexed, especially what appears to a browser
as being text, hidden or not.

Paul

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1 reply

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aygabtu

15 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Although css is specifically mentioned, I believe one can just define the
style with the div and not need css to make it hidden.

Either way, it seems it probably would be seen by google, but how what they
do about it is iffy. Would they detect it as being hidden? There's a good chance.
Certainly anything in html could be indexed, especially what appears to a browser
as being text, hidden or not.

Paul

I did use google's web master tools and it does show in the fetch. At this point I am thinking maybe go with css and define a class that will hide it if the class is associated. This make is less obvious to google that it is hidden and maybe a better chance of being included.

Again, this isn't content I am trying to add specifically for SEO, but I don't want it taking screen real estate all the time for our users.

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aygabtu

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

He wasn't asking how to do it, Scott. He was asking if the search engines will find it.

aygabtu, I had a quick search and couldn't find anything conclusive. I haven't tried it personally. Using it to benefit SEO is a problem though and is frowned upon from Google. I don't know what the ban process is (manual or automatic) but hidden text should be for usability only, not cloaking.

I would be adding it for two reasons. #1 is to benefit my users that need the information. Second is that I hope it would benefit SEO.

It's not like the content can't be accessed by any and every user. It's just defaulted to not being shown, but with a click of a button a jquery event will toggle whether the content is displayed or hidden.

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1 reply

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paulgl

15 years ago

Originally Posted by aygabtu

I would be adding it for two reasons. #1 is to benefit my users that need the information. Second is that I hope it would benefit SEO.

Then why on earth are you hiding it?

I think it would be better using the css hover tooltip or whatever they call it.
Probably would not do it as a javascript, as the executed javascript may not
be seen by google.

That way it's probably not perceived as hidden.

Paul

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1 reply

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aygabtu

15 years ago

Originally Posted by paulgl

Then why on earth are you hiding it?

I think it would be better using the css hover tooltip or whatever they call it.
Probably would not do it as a javascript, as the executed javascript may not
be seen by google.

That way it's probably not perceived as hidden.

Paul

This is going to be multiple paragraphs of content. Far more than what you would want to show on a mouse or hover tooltip. Maybe I will just do this in conjunction with cookies with the default as displayed, then if they hide it, the next time they come to the page, it will continue to be hidden, but for the search engines it will always be visible because they don't interact with the site to turn off.

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scott g

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

He wasn't asking how to do it, Scott. He was asking if the search engines will find it.

aygabtu, I had a quick search and couldn't find anything conclusive. I haven't tried it personally. Using it to benefit SEO is a problem though and is frowned upon from Google. I don't know what the ban process is (manual or automatic) but hidden text should be for usability only, not cloaking.

LOL! I dunno WTF I was reading!!!

I thought it sounded like fun! :p

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scott g
"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."

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Fraggler

15 years ago

It doesn't matter what you or I think; it's what the search engines 'think'. Have a read of what Paul posted.

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Fraggler

15 years ago

If you want to know if the content is indexed or not, regardless of how Google perceives it, go to a well crawled site and add a random unique phrase (that has no Google results) to one of your hidden tags and see if it gets indexed.

It should take less than a day to have a definitive answer.

Thanks

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- Why You Should Create Separate Desktop and Mobile Google Adwords Campaigns

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yukon

Banned 15 years ago

http://searchengineland.com/is-hiding-content-with-display-none-legitimate-seo-13643

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Derek S

15 years ago

ugg I see soo many sites using this method to sell and hide links on a page. But i have yet to see the site or any of the sites it links to penalized in google. Leaves me to believe for the meantime you will be fine... Who knows if one day google will frown upon this or not as more people use it to game SEO

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GeorgR.

15 years ago

Do NOT hide anything from the search engines, its bad, you might get penalized.

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yukon Banned 15 years ago

Originally Posted by GeorgR.

Do NOT hide anything from the search engines, its bad, you might get penalized.

C'mon now, live a little.

Hidden content has it's place & nothing wrong with it, If you use your head in how you handle the hidden text.

Tell me Ebay isn't stuffing keywords/text (Navigation my a$$, lol)!

Ebay/Google Cache

Image #1

Image #2
- [ 2 ] Thanks
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GeorgR.

15 years ago

I know that some people/competitors use DIV tags to hide links in comments. This is actually pretty..uhm..."dirty". I also know it WORKS since those people rank well with it in very competitive niches...

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1 reply

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scott g 15 years ago

Yukon and the Google Cache... Man-o-Man! No one will ever win! Google didn't even win!!!

CHEERS!
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scott g
"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."
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Content in hidden div indexed?

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