Does google prefer expanded text to text that you have to mouse over to show?
-
Does a long scrolling page of text perform better than a page that has the content in sections that have to be moused over to be seen? Are there any articles or research on this?
-
Hi Avi,
Not a lot of material on this element so I can't really support my answer with public information.
About 1.5 years ago we tested this question on some of our pages. Results were not conclusive as the difference in ranking was only so small.
We tested this on popular pages (50k search a month) as well as long tail queries. We went all out with writing a crazy amount of content for those pages.
I noticed that the expanded content was a detractor to our user's activity as our CR went down with it.
Part of me thinks that hiding a significant portion of your textual content can lead to Google not taking this content into account. The other part wonder how google could effectively differentiate something that is hidden purely for aesthetic purpose and what is SEO hidden content.
I suppose the format and volume of hidden content would dictate Google's perception of your content. Looking at the recent developments in Google approach towards content, I would say text heavy pages are progressively diminishing in value. If you could swap the text with a more engaging video, you are more likely to be in a better position in the near future.
-
Google sees the source code. it doesnt matter as long as the text receives the same position and emphasis value really as far as I know... whether it is on a button, in a title, in a speech bubble, so long as it is ON-PAGE ie not called vai some script from some other source and shown there...
my 2 cents, maybe others know more about this, dont know of any "research" done on this.
I would go as far as saying I would bet the difference is not material to even care about, if it exists at all. for your average content text (not key text like titles or headings)
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
-
Text hidden in tabs on desktop
Hello, Is it still devaluated by google ? It seems that on mobile it isn't anymore but what about desktops ? Thank you,
Web Design | | seoanalytics0 -
Hi, I have a doubt. If we want to hide unwanted text in a web page its possible with "" tag. And my question "does a search engine crawl those text? help me.
I want to hide a lot of text behind my site page. I know its possible with that tag. But in what way a search engine looks at those text? Hidden or they are crawled and indexed.
Web Design | | FhyzicsBCPL0 -
Penguin 2.0 drop due to poor anchor text?
Hi, my website experienced a 30% drop in organic traffic following the Penguin 2.0 update, and after years of designing my website with SEO in mind, generating unique content for users, and only focusing on relevant websites in my link building strategy, I'm a bit disheartened by the drop in traffic. Having rolled out a new design of my website at the start of April, I suspect that I've accidentally messed up the structure of the website, making my site difficult to crawl, or making Google think that my site is spammy. Looking at Google Webmaster Tools, the number 1 anchor text in the site is "remove all filters" - which is clearly not what I want! The "remove all filters" link on my website appears when my hotels page loads with filters or sorting or availability dates in place - I included that link to make it easy for users to view the complete hotel listing again. An example of this link is towards the top right hand side of this page: http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/agganis-arena-hotels/300382?star=2 With over 6000 venues on my website, this link has the potential to appear thousands of times, and while the anchor text is always "remove all filters", the destination URL will be different depending on the venue the user is looking at. I'm guessing that to Google, this looks VERY spammy indeed!? I tried to make the filtering/sorting/availability less visible to Google's crawl when I designed the site, through the use of forms, jquery and javascript etc., but it does look like the crawl is managing to access these pages and find the "remove all filters" link. What is the best approach to take when a standard "clear all..." type link is required on a listing page, without making the link appear spammy to Google - it's a link which is only in place to benefit the user - not to cause trouble! My final question to you guys is - do you think this one sloppy piece of work could be enough to cause my site to drop significantly following the Penguin 2.0 update, or is it likely to be a bigger problem than this? And if it is probably due to this piece of work, is it likely that solving the problem could result in a prompt rise back up the rankings, or is there going to be a black mark against my website going forward and slow down recovery? Any advice/suggestions will be greatly appreciated, Thanks Mike
Web Design | | mjk260 -
How to change the entire contents and design in my site without getting troubles with google?
Hello everyone This is my first post over here. In the next few weeks we going to change the entire content and design in our site. The site has 240 pages with poor contents and design. Except 301 redirects for all the old url’s I wanted to consult with you what is the right way to do it without harm my organic traffic that come from google? How google refers to this kind of changes? Which steps should I need to take to do it properly? Hope to get your help in the issue. Tahnks in advance.
Web Design | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Google Analytics
Hi Folks I'm currently measuring multiple goals with Google analytics. At the end of the month I compare the Analytics numbers with my actual, from a diffident data base, and there is often a variance. My questions are; 1- Is there an accepted Delta % in goals eg: + or - 10% 2- Is there a resource that anybody found incredibly useful on this topic 3- does anybody have any tips on trouble shooting here? Thank you in advance
Web Design | | Intrested0 -
Legitimate hidden text and H1s are "OK?" Show me the data!
I'm trying to promote the SEO perspective during a site redesign so I'm researching the impact of design requests: Embedding text in graphic headers and applying to the graphics to get the SEO value Reducing view-able text on a page for design reasons and by using JavaScript to hide text in accordions or tabs. SEOmoz uses these techniques on their ranking report and most of what I read in teh forums says it is OK to hide text if your motives are pure and the text displays in a text-only browser. But I do SEO, not SEOK. I want to optimize, not just avoid penalties. And I try to make decisions based on data, not just anecdotes. Are there any studies out there on the effects these hidden-text topics? How much difference DOES it make to have the text exposed? Since there is potential for spam with these techniques, why would Google give the same rank to pages with and without hidden text? When I'm balancing UX and SEO, I want to clearly define the trade-off. What have you done when faced with this dilemma?
Web Design | | integra-telecom0 -
How to make Address Text Clickable for Google Map Link for Mobile Device
How do I make the address text on the site a clickable link for mobile devices?
Web Design | | bozzie3110 -
SEOMoz crawl report shows a duplicate content and duplicate title for these two url's http://freightmonster.com/ and http://freightmonster.com/index.html. How do I fix this?
What page is attached to http://freightmonster.com/ if it is not the index.html ? Should I do a redirect from the index page to something more descriptive?
Web Design | | FreightBoy1