Are all tabs the result of JS?
-
Hey all,
Bit of a novice here, so bare with me. We have a page that has a lot of content in a tabular format that struggles to rank. I created a similar page, without the tabular format, which vastly outranks it, despite having a miniscule backlink profile in comparison.
Now, I've always been under the impression that anything interactive on a website, like tabs, are the result of JS. However, I can't see any JS in the code (but as mentioned, I'm far from an expert). Code below.
insert copy here, click on [insert anchor text](/media/MODULES AVAILABLE 2017-18.xlsx)
more copy here.Anyone able to shed any light?
Cheers,
Rhys
-
You are Welcome, thanks for your comments
-
What a brilliant response. Thanks, Roman!
-
Google will not treat content that is concealed behind tabs, accordions, or any other element where JavaScript is used to reveal content, in the same way as content that is visible as standard. However, it will still be indexed, so pages may rank for search phrases related to content contained within the hidden sections.
Why does Google devalue hidden content?
Google’s focus is on ensuring that the user experience within its search results is as good as possible. If the algorithm gave full weight to content hidden using JavaScript, this could be compromised.
For example, say a user searches for a term that is matched on a page but only in the hidden section. The user then clicks the search result to go through to that page but can’t immediately see the information they’re looking for because it’s hidden. They give up and return to the search results or head to another website.
This, in Google’s assessment, would not be a high quality user experience and the content within the hidden sections is therefore down-weighted.
In Summary
- Hiding content within tabs, accordions, or other elements that rely on JavaScript to reveal it to users is likely to be treated differently by Google, and assigned far less importance
- Websites, therefore, must take a considered approach and use this method only to hide content that is of secondary importance to the primary topic of the page, or that covers related topics
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
-
Safety Data Sheet PDFs are Showing Higher in Search Results than Product Pages
I have a client who just launched an updated website that has WooCommerce added to it. The website also has a page of Safety Data Sheets that are PDFs that contain information about some of the products. When we do a Google search for many of the products the Safety Data Sheets show up first in the search results instead of the product pages. Has anyone had this happen and know how to solve the issue?
Technical SEO | | teamodea0 -
My Website disappeared from Google Search Results overnight
Hello there, I'm the owner of the Website https://cours-toujours.com/, dedicated to reviewing running shoes. My Website is pretty young and I'm currently focused on building new reviews (so I keep adding new articles, week after week, I did not really focus on the rest of the website for now).Until a few days ago, I saw growing traffic on my Website, everything seemed good and I kept adding new reviews to my website.And then suddently traffic dropped and went to 0 in 2 days (I went from 550 impressions/day to 49 impressions/day in 2 days :/)When I look in the Google Search Console, I don't see any issue: my sitemaps are submitted and the correct number of URLs are reported I don't have any Manual Action or Security Issue I don't have any Removal Request Everything seems fine... But I can barely find my website in Google Search Results.When I do a site search (site:cours-toujours.com), I find only 2 pages of results, mostly non-important pages (categories, etc.).I asked in Google Community Forums, and i got this reply about my pages being too similar to one another (https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/44880689?hl=en). But I'm not really happy with this answer, as all my pages have ~1000 words of unique content (even if of course they have the same structure as they are all dedicatd to reviewing a running shoe...)Any idea where this might come from/how I can fix the issue?
Technical SEO | | SimonCoursToujours0 -
Shopify robots blocking stylesheets causing inconsistent mobile-friendly test results?
One of our shopify sites suffered an extreme rankings drop. Recent Google algorithm updates include mobile first so I tested the site and our team got different mobile-friendly test results. However, search console is also flagging pages as not mobile friendly. So, while us end-users see the site as OK on mobile, this may not be the case for Google? I researched more about inconsistent mobile test results and found answers that say it may be due to robots.txt blocking stylesheets. Do you recognise any directory blocked that might be affecting Google's rendering? We can't edit shopify robots.txt unfortunately. Our dev said the only thing that stands out to him is Disallow: /design_theme_id and the rest shouldn't be hindering Google bots. Here are some of the files blocked: Disallow: /admin
Technical SEO | | nhhernandez
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /9103034/checkouts
Disallow: /9103034/orders
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /account
Disallow: /collections/+
Disallow: /collections/%2B
Disallow: /collections/%2b
Disallow: /blogs/+
Disallow: /blogs/%2B
Disallow: /blogs/%2b
Disallow: /design_theme_id
Disallow: /preview_theme_id
Disallow: /preview_script_id
Disallow: /discount/*
Disallow: /gift_cards/*
Disallow: /apple-app-site-association0 -
JS loading blocker
Is there a tool, or Chrome extension I can use to load a page, identify the .js on the page, 'uncheck' selected .js and load the page again to check loading correctly? Even better to be able to defer/move to the end of the file to test.
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Google's Omitted Results - Attempt to De-Index
We're trying to get webpages from our QA site out of Google's index. We've inserted the NOINDEX tags. Google now shows only 3 results (down from 196,000), however, they offer a link to "show omitted results" at the bottom of the page. (A) Did we do something wrong? or (B) were we successful with our NOINDEX but Google will offer to show omitted results anyway? Please advise! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Google place listings and search results- quick question.
Has anybody else noticed that they are ranking better on 'places' yet they have dropped off in the actual search results? We've had no message through webmaster tools. The same seems to have happened to our competitors.
Technical SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Cache pages in search results
My URL is: pure mobile . ca when searching on google for "puremobile note 2 defender" the search results are coming up with the incorrect title pages of my search results - for some reason all the search results are coming up with "unlocked cell phone" at the end of the title. but on the android and on my desktop - they show the correct title of my pages. we used to deal with unlocked cell phone ( over a year ago) - and all meta tags and title tags have been fully updated. how can i let google know to update these results.
Technical SEO | | puremobile0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0