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 -
GWT Fetch & Render displays desktop version of site as mobile
Hi team, I noticed that when I request a desktop rendering in GWT using fetch and render, pages render as the mobile version. Screenshot attached. It's related to the VHS units in our CSS (as far as I'm aware). Does anyone know what the implications of this may be? Does it mean googlebot can only see the mobile version of our website? Any help is appreciated. Jake jgScJ
Technical SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Google Displaying wrong URL but correct page title and description in SERPS
Hi. Our second highest performing page on Google is messed up in the SERPS. This is our login page. It always ranks high. It still does, but the URL is incorrect. Google is referencing an old redirect that was for a one off campaign from January 2014. This page has long been redirected. But now the vanity url for this page is what is displayed in Google. The link goes to our login page but once you log in it redirects you to a page saying the offer has expired instead of your account details. This is a huge issue for us. Can anyone shed some light? I'm having a rel canonical added since this page is used for a lot of vanity deeplinks.
Technical SEO | | PollyKane0 -
Why is Google's cache preview showing different version of webpage (i.e. not displaying content)
My URL is: http://www.fslocal.comRecently, we discovered Google's cached snapshots of our business listings look different from what's displayed to users. The main issue? Our content isn't displayed in cached results (although while the content isn't visible on the front-end of cached pages, the text can be found when you view the page source of that cached result).These listings are structured so everything is coded and contained within 1 page (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/). But even though the URL stays the same, we've created separate "pages" of content (e.g. "About," "Additional Info," "Contact," etc.) for each listing, and only 1 "page" of content will ever be displayed to the user at a time. This is controlled by JavaScript and using display:none in CSS. Why do our cached results look different? Why would our content not show up in Google's cache preview, even though the text can be found in the page source? Does it have to do with the way we're using display:none? Are there negative SEO effects with regards to how we're using it (i.e. we're employing it strictly for aesthetics, but is it possible Google thinks we're trying to hide text)? Google's Technical Guidelines recommends against using "fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash." If we were to separate those business listing "pages" into actual separate URLs (e.g. http://www.fslocal.com/toronto/auto-vault-canada/contact/ would be the "Contact" page), and employ static HTML code instead of complicated JavaScript, would that solve the problem? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fslocal0 -
Getting a video displaying a lightbox indexed
We have created a video for a category page with the goal of building links to the page and improving the conversion rate of visitors to the page. This category is Christmas oriented so we want to get the video dropped in ASAP. Unfortunately there was a mixup with our developer and he created a lightbox pop-up to display the video on the category page. I'm concerned this will hurt our ability to get the video indexed in Google. Here was his response. Is what he says here true? "With the video originally being in lightbox the iFrame Embed was enough since the video can't be on the page, it would have to be hidden on the page which is ignored by Google. The SEO would be derived from modifying the video sitemap to define the category page as the HTML page for the Wistia video and Google will make the association. The sitemap did all the heavy lifting, the schema markup did not come till later so it had no additional affect on Google other then to re-enforce the sitemap." Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GManSEO0 -
Why is Google not displaying the right URL on SERP?
Google is not displaying the URL correctly for this page. (See image) Here is the search that I performed: http://goo.gl/xk7L8 If you click on the URL, it doesn't take you to the page that it the URL references. Any ideas? It should show this URL: http://www.theskincentermd.com/breast-enhancement tsc-serp.png
Technical SEO | | theBREWROOM0 -
Change in how Google displays SERPs
Hi All, Recently our SERPs have changed in Google results to show product prices from our pages rather than the meta description. This just started to happen in November with no change (that we know of) on our side. I have attached a from and to SERP image if that helps. Does any one have any ideas as its starting to effect our rankings? Thanks, Tony. Tkeou,6jg6Q Tkeou,6jg6Q#1
Technical SEO | | tstauntonwri0 -
How do I get Google to display categories instead of the URL in results?
I've seen that for some domains Google will show a nice clickable site heirarchy in place of the actual URL of a search result. See attached for an example. How do I go about achieving this type of results? categorized.png
Technical SEO | | Carlito-2569610