Display: none
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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/
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.
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
-
Bing result title is displaying a competitors name
When searching "Cambridge Savings Bank" which is the specific name of a bank in Bing the search results return with them as Number one with the correct URL. The issue is Bing has titled the search result "East Cambridge Savings Bank" (which is another entity all together) and still has the correct www.cambridgesavings.com URL. So basically Bing is putting another corporation's name on our website. This issue only is in Bing. Any idea how to correct this? 2.png 1.png
Technical SEO | | BOD20081 -
Incorrect Logo is Displaying on Google Knowledge Graph - Need Urgent Solution!!
Incorrect Logo is Displaying on Google Knowledge Graph for our company. We have structured schema for logo etc. But still, Google is fetching and showing logo from some other sources on google search results. What will be the right fix for this? Our site url : http://www.travelyaari.com/
Technical SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Rich Snippets Inconsistent Display
Hi Folks, We implemented Schema mark up on our hotel details page many months ago now (previously we had a different mark up language, but switched to Schema during a complete page re-design). Its been live for plenty of time now and is being picked up in webmaster tools. http://www.asiarooms.com/en/singapore/singapore/175433-orchard_hotel_singapore.html Even before we switched to Schema we had a very inconsistent display of rich snippet data in the search results and this has continued despite the mark up being implemented correctly. For example, a search in Google Singapore for 'Orchard Hotel Singapore' shows the AsiaRooms.com listing without any rich snippets. You can see that the vast majority of our competitors like Agoda, Booking.com always show rich snippet data (search for 'orchard hotel singapore agoda' for example). I have checked the hotel in the rich snippet testing tool and its marked up correctly such that it should feasibly show the review count and the score. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.asiarooms.com%2Fen%2Fsingapore%2Fsingapore%2F175433-orchard_hotel_singapore.html&html= Whilst Agoda and Booking seem to display rich snippet data on literally EVERY hotel, its very inconsistent for AsiaRooms which is extremely frustrating - feels like some kind of punishment or favouritism. Any ideas why this might be the case and anything I could try to resolve it? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | BenRush1 -
Google inconsistent in display of meta content vs page content?
Our e-comm site includes more than 250 brand pages - lrg image, some fluffy text, maybe a video, links to categories for that brand, etc. In many cases, Google publishes our page title and description in their search results. However, in some cases, Google instead publishes our H1 and the aforementioned fluffy page content. We want our page content to read well, be descriptive of the brand and appropriate for the audience. We want our meta titles and descriptions brief and likely to attract CTR from qualified shoppers. I'm finding this difficult to manage when Google pulls from two different areas inconsistently. So my question... Is there a way to ensure Google only utilizes our title/desc for our listings?
Technical SEO | | websurfer0 -
Page Title Not Displayed in SERPS
Why would a page title not be displayed in the SERPS? Everything appears to be formatted correctly in the code, yet the title of the company gets displayed instead of the page title? Any general idea why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Dramatic Decrease in Google Organic Traffic Indicates a Penalty But None Found
So we've been having some difficulty with one of our websites since we split it in half and moved one section of content to a new domain with a new name, at the end of May. http://www.dialtosave.co.uk/mobile/ was moved to http://www.somobile.co.uk And in the following 6 weeks, the google organic traffic has fallen to miniscule levels, that seem to indicate a more serious issue than just low ranking. Initially when the site was moved, the 301s transferred the authority very quickly and the new website pages ranked well. Now, some of them simply won't rank at all unless you include the name of the website "somobile". Here is one of the current rankings that indicates an issue:
Technical SEO | | purpleindigo
"somobile" - 1
"somobile mobile phones" - not in top 50 These are some of the terms we used to rank in the top 10 on Google UK, and still do on Bing UK, but don't rank in the top 50 on Google UK now:
samsung galaxy ace
apple iphone 5 deals
samsung tocco icon Our webmaster central account says that only 30% of the pages in our sitemap are in the index. It seems like a penalty has been imposed, but our reconsideration request (just submitted because it seemed like a sensible next step) came back saying there were no manual actions taken. Can you see what it is that might be causing the problem for us? I would have thought it was the new domain (with less direct links and less brand credibility), or content issues, but I would have thought that would just reduce the ranking by a few pages rather than just hide the pages altogether.0 -
Comments in slider using display: none
What is the best way to get comments indexed that are hidden in a slider using display: none? For example: http://www.coupondudes.com/stores/kmart.com Click on "Add comment" Is there a way to do this without changing the design? If not, should we create a page per coupon with the comments shown. Will that pose duplicate content issues? 20110512-qg1ra18k9khdsqi6j3rkq4dfgb.jpg
Technical SEO | | 58phases0 -
Title Tag for homepage Not displaying correctly in Google Search Results
Hi We have a problem with how Google is is displaying our title tag when a user does a search on our company name Increation. I have attached two images of how the title tag for our Homepage is dispayed in Google Search Results. One of them is "increations" - this is the result which is displaying incorrectly. The other shows Kitchens | Bathrooms | | Luxury Kitchens | - which is how we want the title tag to be dispalyed. This inorreclt result is only displayed when a user types in Increation into Google. (BTW it only happens on Google, not the other search engines). To give you some background an external SEO company did some work for us (before I joined as usual :-)). They built a lot of anchor links with the word "Increations" pointing back to our home page. Is this whats causing the probelm? Also how can we resolve this issue so that the correct Title Tag is displayed. Thanks for your help. Mik increation_search_results_google#hyhfZ
Technical SEO | | increation0