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.
Can Google read content that is hidden under a "Read More" area?
-
For example, when a person first lands on a given page, they see a collapsed paragraph but if they want to gather more information they press the "read more" and it expands to reveal the full paragraph. Does Google crawl the full paragraph or just the shortened version?
In the same vein, what if you have a text box that contains three different tabs. For example, you're selling a product that has a text box with overview, instructions & ingredients tabs all housed under the same URL. Does Google crawl all three tabs?
Thanks for your insight!
-
Yes, for the most part. Google wants to deliver the best results for visitors based on their search query. So if something is hidden from initial view this would impact ux and especially if it's poorly implemented (not intuitive). As you know, original and compelling copy is the best. Unfortunately in many situations, such as a large ecommerce site, it is resource intensive. It's best to avoid thin content. However, it does get ranked as you can grab a snippet and place in Google and look at the results. So yes, it's possible that Google will rank these pages with duplicate content in a hidden view.
I would advise you to tell your client to remove any hidden content and rewrite product descriptions. Depending on resources, they may/may not want to do this. If they don't, at least you made a recommendation. Good luck!
-
Ok, that makes sense. And can that be applied to a text box with tabs?
Follow up to that - the situation is that I have a client hat doesn't have a lot of "original" content on their e-commerce page. It sounds like Google will take into account that content as "original" content but won't necessarily used it to build relevancy for any keywords hidden within. Is that correct?
-
I agree with Kevin in the answer above, the content may be crawled (depending on how you have hidden the paragraph using HTML) but Google may not give the right advantage of the content available after clicking the link.
We have a client with FAQ section with similar situation https://www.fairsplit.com/faqs/ , the website gets authority for the Question Titles of the FAQ section and not for the content as answer available after clicking the question.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have further questions.
Regards,
Vijay
-
The Googlebot will crawl this information. However, Google may elect not to index it or discount this content in its rankings.
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
-
"Avoid Too Many Internal Links" when you have a mega menu
Using the on-page grader and whilst further investigating internal linking, I'm concerned that as the ecommerce website has a very link heavy mega menu the rule of 100 may be impeding on the contextual links we're creating. Clearly we don't want to no-follow our entire menu. Should we consider no-indexing the third-level- for example short sleeve shirts here... Clothing > Shirts > Short Sleeve Shirts What about other pages we're don't care to index anyway such as the 'login page' the 'cart' the search button? Any thoughts appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ant-Scarborough0 -
How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?
Hello mozers! I have a question about duplicate content for you... One on my clients pages have been dropping in search volume for a while now, and I've discovered it's because the search term isn't as popular as it used to be. So... we need to create a new landing page using a more popular search term. The page which is losing traffic is based on the search query "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory" this only gets 0-10 searches per month according to the keyword explorer tool. However, if we changed this to "replacing conservatory roof with solid roof" this gets up to 500 searches per month. Muuuuch better! The issue is, I don't want to close down and re-direct the old page because it's got a featured snippet and sits in position 1. So I'd like to create another page instead... however, as the two are effectively the same content, I would then land myself in a duplicate content issue. If I were to put a rel="canonical" tag in the original "can I put a solid roof...." page but say the master page is now the new one, would that get around the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?
I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Should I NOFOLLOW my "Add To Cart" buttons?
Hello and Merry Christmass Should I NOFOLLOW my "Add To Cart" buttons? My e-commerce site has hundreds of products. Content wise, there is no real value to the reader on that page (besides for some testimonials and "why here" sentences). So it is not a page you'd want / expect to find in the SERPs. Also, with hundreds of links pointing to this page it would be "stronger" than other important pages which doesn't make sense. Last but not least, if I have limited time that the bots are on my site, why keep sending them to a non important page. This is why I am leaning to nofollowing the "add to cart" buttons and looking for reinforcements. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
How to get content to index faster in Google.....pubsubhubbub?
I'm curious to know what tools others are using to get their content to index faster (other than html sitmap and pingomatic, twitter, etc) Would installing the wordpress pubsubhubbub plugin help even though it uses pingomatic? http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pubsubhubbub/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
"Jump to" Links in Google, how do you get them?
I have just seen yoast.com results in Google and noticed that nearly all the indexed pages show a "Jump to" link So instead of showing the full URL under the title tag, it shows these type of links yoast.com › SEO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
yoast.com › Social Media
yoast.com › Analytics With the SEO, Social Media and Analytics all being clickable. How has he achieved this? And is it something to try and incorporate in my sites?0 -
Can Google read my backlink in Javascript??
Hi SeoMoz community! I have a software product, which our clients implement onto their websites. It is like a pop up box. I know that backlinks are very important for SEO ranking, and I really want to give our clients 2 options of product: 1. you can get the free/cheaper option if you use the code which has a keyworded backlink to our site on it 2. you can pay small fee if you don't want to use the version with a link to our site on it Now, the problem is that the product is written entirely in Javascript, and I don't think that Google crawls this, do they? Is there a way around this? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qdigi0 -
Schema.org Implementation: "Physician" vs. "Person"
Hey all, I'm looking to implement Schema tagging for a local business and am unsure of whether to use "Physician" or "Person" for a handful of doctors. Though "Physician" seems like it should be the obvious answer, Schema.org states that it should refer to "A doctor's office" instead of a physician. The properties used in "Physician" seem to apply to a physician's practice, and not an actual physician. Properties are sourced from the "Thing", "Place", "Organization", and "LocalBusiness" schemas, so I'm wondering if "Person" might be a more appropriate implementation since it allows for more detail (affiliations, awards, colleagues, jobTitle, memberOf), but I wanna make sure I get this right. Also, I'm wondering if the "Physician" schema allows for properties pulled from the "Person" schema, which I think would solve everything. For reference: http://schema.org/Person http://schema.org/Physician Thanks, everyone! Let me know how off-base my strategy is, and how I might be able to tidy it up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mudbugmedia0