Display: none

[seozachz]

A prominent SEO consultant recently told me that using display:none in the css is still a bad idea.  We built a simple drop down menu using widely used jquery techniques and it uses display:none to slideToggle the menu.

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?  If so, how should I change it since just about every jquery drop down I come across uses the slideToggle/display:none.

[RichardVaughan]

I'd suggest checking that any jquery solution hides stuff with display:none after the page has loaded. Essentially is the content/menu fully visible when you turn javascript off and load the page? (regardless of how horrific the display looks?)

Bear in mind that Google also advises against things like display:none for implementation of things like microformats.

[john4math]

Using display:none is fine.  There's JavaScript on the page that will make those items display when the users takes some action on the menu.  Google has some way of reading the JavaScript to see what may be displayed, and at this point, I'm sure they're very good at detecting these types of menus.  I don't think you can't make a menu like that without using it, and tons of sites use them.

Obviously, you shouldn't use display:none to cloak text on the page, when no user action can get that text to be displayed.

[AdoptionHelp]

Conventional wisdom says this is a bad idea because its a technique used by black-hats to stuff keywords into their documents. See:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-unwise-comments/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/753951/seo-is-h1-tag-thats-hidden-using-displaynone-given-prominence-by-search-engin

However, for JQuery and things like menu's and screen reader links, Google appears to know the difference. See:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=50f9a4942ac605ec&hl=en

The takeaway is you can use this, and its unlikely to get your site penalized. But be careful that what you're doing is both (a) common practice and (b) couldn't get caught in a spam finding algorithm. If you are in MLM or pharmaceuticals or something that often gets associated with spam, you'll want to avoid using these techniques. If there's no way your site could be considered spam and you're using display:none legitimately, then you'll be safe.