Google's Stance on "Hidden" Content
-
Hi,
I'm aware Google doesn't care if you have helpful content you can hide/unhide by user interaction. I am also aware that Google frowns upon hiding content from the user for SEO purposes. We're not considering anything similar to this.
The issue is, we will be displaying only a part of our content to the user at a time.
We'll load 3 results on each page initially. These first 3 results are static, meaning on each initial page load/refresh, the same 3 results will display. However, we'll have a "Show Next 3" button which replaces the initial results with the next 3 results. This content will be preloaded in the source code so Google will know about it.
I feel like Google shouldn't have an issue with this since we're allowing the user action to cycle through all results. But I'm curious, is it an issue that the user action does NOT allow them to see all results on the page at once?
I am leaning towards no, this doesn't matter, but would like some input if possible. Thanks a lot!
-
I don't think you're looking at a penalty situation, if that's what you are asking. Seems perfectly legitimate.
The more interesting question to me is how Google will "weigh" the hidden content in it's algorithm. I suspect that anything that is hidden by javascript (or another method) will hold less weight than text in plain sight. You could try Google's new "Fetch and Render" tool in Webmaster Tools to see how Google views the page. Anything that doesn't display might not get as much consideration as plain text.
Of course, this is a lot of speculation. We don't really know for sure how Google treats text like this, but it's a pretty common situation.
-
Anyone else want to take a crack at this?
-
Hi Alrockn,
I'm not sure you understood the question. Thank you for reading.
-
Sounds similar to paginate issues, and the potential to create duplicate content in the eye's of google, particularly if you're using a template. Not a serious issue if this occurs for 1 or 2 clicks, but if viewer are going to do this for 5 or more times after the initial landing page, it might be a problem with the meta-tags.
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
-
Ranking drop for "Mobile" devices category in Google webmaster tools
Hi, Our rank dropped and we noticed it's a major drop in "Mobile" devices category, which is contributing to the overall drop. What exactly drops mobile rankings? We do not have any messages in search console. We have made few redirects and removed footer links. How these affect? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
Satish0 -
Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'
Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse0 -
Google can't access/crawl my site!
Hi I'm dealing with this problem for a few days. In fact i didn't realize it was this serious until today when i saw most of my site "de-indexed" and losing most of the rankings. [URL Errors: 1st photo] 8/21/14 there were only 42 errors but in 8/22/14 this number went to 272 and it just keeps going up. The site i'm talking about is gazetaexpress.com (media news, custom cms) with lot's of pages. After i did some research i came to the conclusion that the problem is to the firewall, who might have blocked google bots from accessing the site. But the server administrator is saying that this isn't true and no google bots have been blocked. Also when i go to WMT, and try to Fetch as Google the site, this is what i get: [Fetch as Google: 2nd photo] From more than 60 tries, 2-3 times it showed Complete (and this only to homepage, never to articles). What can be the problem? Can i get Google to crawl properly my site and is there a chance that i will lose my previous rankings? Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | granitgash
Granit FvhvDVR.png dKx3m1O.png0 -
Site's disappearnce in web rankings
I'm currently doing some work on a website: http://www.abetterdriveway.com.au. Upon starting, I detected a lot of spammy links going to this website and sort to remove them before submitting a disavow report. A few months later, this site completely disappeared in the rankings, with all keywords suddenly not ranked. I realised that the test website (which was put up to view before the new site went live) was still up on another URL and Google was suddenly ranking that site instead. Hence, I ensured that test site was completely removed. 3 weeks later however, the site (www.abetterdriveway.com.au) still remains unranked for its keywords. Upon checking Web Master Tools, I cannot see anything that stands out. There is no manual action or crawling issues that I can detect. Would anyone know the reason for this persistent disappearance? Is it something I will just have to wait out until ranking results come back, or is there something I am missing? Help here would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
What are the ranking factors for "Google News"? How can we compete?
We have a few sport news websites that are picked up by Google News. Once in a blue moon, one of our articles ranks for a great keyword and shows in one of the 3 listings that Google News has in SERPS. Any tips on how we can we optimise more of our articles to compete in these 3 positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | betnl0 -
Ecommerce URL's
I'm a bit divided about the URL structure for ecommerce sites. I'm using Magento and I have Canonical URLs plugin installed. My question is about the URL structure and length. 1st Way: If I set up Product to have categories in the URL it will appear like this mysite.com/category/subcategory/product/ - and while the product can be in multiple places , the Canonical URL can be either short or long. The advantage of having this URL is that it shows all the categories in the breadcrumbs ( and a whole lot more links over the site ) . The disadvantage is the URL Length 2nd Way: Setting up the product to have no category in the URL URL will be mysite.com/product/ Advantage: short URL. disadvantage - doesn't show the categories in the breadcrumbs if you link direct. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear1 -
Doubts with URL's structure
Hi guys i have some doubts with the correct URL structure for a new site. The question is about how show the city, the district and also the filters. I would do that: www.domain.com/category/city/disctict but maybe is better do that: **www.domain.com/category/city-district ** I also have 3 filters that are "individual/colective" "indoor/outdoor" and "young/adult" but that are not really interesting for the querys so where and how i put this filtters? At the end of the url showing these: **www.domain.com/cateogry/city/district#adult#outdoor#colective ** ? Well really i don't know what to do with the filters. Check if you could help me with that please. I also have a lof of interest in knowing if maybe is better use this combination **www.domain.com/category-city or domain.com/category/city **and know about the diference. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarmoscatt0 -
Hundreds of thousands of 404's on expired listings - issue.
Hey guys, We have a conundrum, with a large E-Commerce site we operate. Classified listings older than 45 days are throwing up 404's - hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Note that Webmaster Tools peaks at 100,000. Many of these listings receive links. Classified listings that are less than 45 days show other possible products to buy based on an algorithm. It is not possible for Google to crawl expired listings pages from within our site. They are indexed because they were crawled before they expired, which means that many of them show in search results. -> My thought at this stage, for usability reasons, is to replace the 404's with content - other product suggestions, and add a meta noindex in order to help our crawl equity, and get the pages we really want to be indexed prioritised. -> Another consideration is to 301 from each expired listing to the category heirarchy to pass possible link juice. But we feel that as many of these listings are findable in Google, it is not a great user experience. -> Or, shall we just leave them as 404's? : google sort of says it's ok Very curious on your opinions, and how you would handle this. Cheers, Croozie. P.S I have read other Q & A's regarding this, but given our large volumes and situation, thought it was worth asking as I'm not satisfied that solutions offered would match our needs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie0