Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Will Google Penalize Content put in a Div with a Scrollbar?
-
I noticed Moosejaw was adding quite a bit of content to the bottom of category pages via a div tag that makes use of a scroll bar. Could a site be penalized by Google for this technique?
Example: http://www.moosejaw.com/moosejaw/shop/search_Patagonia-Clothing____
-
I see this question has been answered years back from now. But what's the importance of this issue in today's world.
I just got a client's website and he want to add SEO optimized content in the scroll bar at the bottom of the page. I don't know if that's a spam or not. Can you please suggest me.
I'm eager to get a proper answer.
website is: www (dot) zdhsales (dot) com
-
I've actually wondered the same before. To the best of my knowledge I've never heard anyone cite overflow: auto; as a negative signal compared to the amount of press display: none; text-indent: -9999px; etc. gets. It very well could be abused just as badly though. The only way I could think of an abuse-check would be to weigh the amount of text in the corresponding div against what a practical min-height of that div should be, but that seems a bit excessive.
I agree with Steven, it's come to a point where these css techniques have very legitimate uses and probably shouldn't be penalized. Plus, there's plenty of other ways to accomplish the same thing, whether it's document tree manipulation or any other kind of rendering of a page after the crawable URL has been loaded. So at what point is it worth fighting such a thing?
edit: on a side note, what's the deal with those crazy underscores at the end of the URL? yuck.
-
Do Google actually still penalised Overflow:Hidden and Display:none though still, or just off screen placement such as left:-9999px? If they do its something that I'm sure will be changed as its commonly used for "div switching" through navigational menu's and tabs (for display:none at least).
-
Thank you for the response Ryan. Although the site is not outwardly "hiding" the copy, from a usability standpoint this method does not seem to carry much if any value to the person visiting the page. I figured Google would see this as a lame attempt at search engine bate and frown upon the practice.
-
To the best of my knowledge this has no impact on SEO. Googlebot doesn't like it when you hide content, but that only applies to overflow:hidden and display:none as far as I know.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does google sandbox aged domains too?
Hello, i have a question. Recently i bought a domain from godaddy auction which is 23 years old and have DA 37 PA 34 Before bidding i check out the domain on google using this query to make sure if pages of this website are showing or not (site:mydomain.com) only home page was indexed on google. Further i check the domain on archive web the domain was last active in 2015. And then it parked for long about 4 years. So now my question does google consider these type of domain as new or will sandboxed them if i try to rebuild them and rank for other niche keywords ? Because its been 4 weeks i have been building links to my domain send several profile and social signals to my domain. My post is indexed on google but not showing in any google serp result.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Steven231 -
How good/bad the exit intent pop-ups? What is Google's perspective?
Hi all, We have launched the exit intent pop-ups on our website where a pop-up will appear when the visitor is about to leave the website. This will trigger when the mouse is moved to the top window section; as an attempt by the visitor to close the window. We see a slight ranking drop post this pop-up launch. As the pop-up is appearing just before someone leaves the website; does this making Google to see as if the user left because of the pop-up and penalizing us? What is your thoughts and suggestions on this? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Pages mirrored on unknown websites (not just content, all the HTML)... blackhat I've never seen before.
Someone more expert than me could help... I am not a pro, just doing research on a website... Google Search Console shows many backlinks in pages under unknown domains... this pages are mirroring the pages of the linked website... clicking on a link on the mirror page leads to a spam page with link spam... The homepage of these unknown domain appear just fine... looks like that the domain is partially hijacked... WTF?! Have you ever seen something likes this? Can it be an outcome of a previous blackhat activity?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 2mlab0 -
Website not listing in google - screaming frog shows 500 error? What could the issue be?
Hey, http://www.interconnect.org.uk/ - the site seems to load fine, but for some reason the site is not getting indexed. I tried running the site on screaming frog, and it gives a 500 error code, which suggests it can't access the site? I'm guessing this is the same problem google is having, do you have any ideas as to why this may be and how I can rectify this? Thanks, Andrew
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Heehaw0 -
Noindexing Thin Content Pages: Good or Bad?
If you have massive pages with super thin content (such as pagination pages) and you noindex them, once they are removed from googles index (and if these pages aren't viewable to the user and/or don't get any traffic) is it smart to completely remove them (404?) or is there any valid reason that they should be kept? If you noindex them, should you keep all URLs in the sitemap so that google will recrawl and notice the noindex tag? If you noindex them, and then remove the sitemap, can Google still recrawl and recognize the noindex tag on their own?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Merging four sites into one... Best way to combine content?
First of all, thank you in advance for taking the time to look at this. The law firm I work for once took a "more is better" approach and had multiple websites, with keyword rich domains. We are a family law firm, but we have a specific site for "Arizona Child Custody" as one example. We have four sites. All four of our sites rank well, although I don't know why. Only one site is in my control, the other three are managed by FindLaw. I have no idea why the FindLaw sites do well, other than being in the FindLaw directory. They have terrible spammy page titles, and using Copyscape, I realize that most of the content that FindLaw provides for it's attorneys are "spun articles." So I have a major task and I don't know how to begin. First of all, since all four sites rank well for all of the desired phrases-- will combining all of that power into one site rocket us to stardom? The sites all rank very well now, even though they are all technically terrible. Literally. I would hope that if I redirect the child custody site (as one example) to the child custody overview page on the final merged site, we would still maintain our current SERP for "arizona child custody lawyer." I have strongly encouraged my boss to merge our sites for many reasons. One of those being that it's playing havoc with our local places. On the other hand, if I take down the child custody site, redirect it, and we lose that ranking, I might be out of a job. Finally, that brings me down to my last question. As I mentioned, the child custody site is "done" very poorly. Should I actually keep the spun content and redirect each and every page to a duplicate on our "final" domain, or should I redirect each page to a better article? This is the part that I fear the most. I am considering subdomains. Like, redirecting the child custody site to childcustody.ourdomain.com-- I know, for a fact, that will work flawlessly. I've done that many times for other clients that have multiple domains. However, we have seven areas of practice and we don't have 7 nice sites. So child custody would be the only legal practice area that has it's own subdomain. Also, I wouldn't really be doing anything then, would I? We all know 301 redirects work. What I want is to harness all of this individual power to one mega-site. Between the four sites, I have 800 pages of content. I need to formulate a plan of action now, and then begin acting on it. I don't want to make the decision alone. Anybody care to chime in? Thank you in advance for your help. I really appreciate the time it took you to read this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SDSLaw0 -
Is it negative to put a backlink into the footer's website of our clients ?
Hello there ! Everything is in the subject of this post but here is the context : we are a web agency and we, among others, build websites for our clients (most of them are shops). Until now, we put a link in their footer, like "developped by MyWebShop". But we don't know if it is bad or not. With only one website we can have like hundred of backlinks at once, but is it good for SEO or not ? Will Google penalize us thinking that is blackhat practices ? Is it better to put our link in the "legal notices" or "disclaimer" part of the websites ? What is the best practice for a lasting SEO ? I hope you understand my question, Thnak you in advance !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mywebshop0