Google SEO and hidden elements

Question

Will google ignore words that are inside the elements that are set to "display: none" in css?

Example:

<div id="under_meny" style="display:none;">About Us | Contact Us</div>

It looks maybe a bit strange that I want to hide a menu like that, but there is a submenu. And will the user to activate it. But I do not want it to go beyond SEO.

Photoreceptor

Answer 1

hide your menu with javascript on pageload. this way google will still analyse your text. it ignores display:none elements, as well as elements which textcolor is the same as background color, thus making it invisible to the human eye

sources: i read it in a book a long time ago. there are sites on the internet though on the topic

• http://www.webdesign-in.de/mts/google-bestraft-display-none-visibility-hidden/
• http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002971.html
• http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-nearly-hidden-text/
• http://www.julian-bez.de/blog/2005/10/20/display-none-considered-spam/
• http://searchengineland.com/is-hiding-content-with-display-none-legitimate-seo-13643

Protuberancy

Thanks, that was what I thought, but wanted a confirmation on it:) – Photoreceptor

Do you have a source for this statement? – Punctilio

what about elements that have visibility:hidden or elements that have an element in front of them? – Reticulum

Note that Google crawler started executing JavaScript in the last ten years since this answer was updated, so this may or may not still be relevant. – Claustrophobia

Answer 2

This is a genius solution to hide the content via Javascript without having the content flashing while the page loads. Searchbots and users that don't have Javascript enabled will see the text displayed.

Libradalibrarian

Answer 3

You are perfectly safe using display none, this person ran a test and shared the results. Just don't use the attribute for grey hat SEO and you should be fine.

http://seotesttool.com/blog/does-the-google-bot-index-css-hidden-divs/

Discontinuance

Answer 4

If you hide your menu with javascript the search engines will likely not be able to follow the links. I have used dislay:none to hide chunks of navigation which I don't want to appear on certain areas of a website. There are a some CMS sytsems build to show navigation this way and if Google banned all sites built with those CMS systems then it might not be providing the most relevant results.

If you are using it to hide text just for seo purposes stay away from that. It is likely the search engines will not pick it up but if they do - for example if a competitor flags it to Google - and you are using it to hid spammy text then be prepared for the consequences.

Scarab

Answer 5

These types of hidden content such as overuse of excessive keywords violate Google's Webmaster Guidelines search guidelines.

However, not all links or hidden text are supposed to fool the search engine. For content that the google server is difficult to recognize, such as text on images, javascript or flash, hidden content can improve the indexing of your website content more effectively.

Google is a smart machine and there are always improvements to how to bring information to users in the most effective way. Therefore, when doing SEO for the web, you also need to properly navigate the SEO, avoid overuse that violates the Google search instructions.

Limb