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 -
What to do with internal spam url's google indexed?
I am in SEO for years but never met this problem. I have client who's web page was hacked and there was posted many, hundreds of links, These links has been indexed by google. Actually these links are not in comments but normal external urls's. See picture. What is the best way to remove them? use google disavow tool or just redirect them to some page? The web page is new, but ranks good on google and has domain authority 24. I think that these spam url's improved rankings too 🙂 What would be the best strategy to solve this. Thanks. k9Bviox
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrisZigurs0 -
Hiding Elements on Mobile. Will this effect SEO.
Hey guys and gals, I am hiding elements with @media sizes on the mobile experience for this site. http://prepacademyschools.org/ My question is when hiding elements from mobile, will this have a negative effect on rankings for mobile and or desktop? Right now it is a hero banner and testimonial. My interest is because I feel responsive is now working against conversions when it comes to mobile because desktop typically has the same info several times where mobile it can be repetitive and only needed once. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | brightvessel1 -
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 -
I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?
Hi Guys QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around. The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ. 1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content. Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to **ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat ** If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc? For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well? How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make? Any insight into this would be great! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may1 -
Indexing content behind a login
Hi, I manage a website within the pharmaceutical industry where only healthcare professionals are allowed to access the content. For this reason most of the content is behind a login. My challenge is that we have a massive amount of interesting and unique content available on the site and I want the healthcare professionals to find this via Google! At the moment if a user tries to access this content they are prompted to register / login. My question is that if I look for the Google Bot user agent and allow this to access and index the content will this be classed as cloaking? I'm assuming that it will. If so, how can I get around this? We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages! I look forward to all of your suggestions as I'm struggling for ideas now! Thanks Steve
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stever9990 -
What means a back door link. Please explain and I will give you credit
Some one is asking me to do a back door link to each other, what dose it mean?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Does having the same descrition for different products a bad thing the titles are all differnent but but they are the same product but with different designs on them does this count as duplicate content?
does having the same description for different products a bad thing the titles are all different but but they are the same product but with different designs on them does this count as duplicate content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Casefun1