Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. Hiding content or links in responsive design

    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.

    Hiding content or links in responsive design

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4
    4
    6200
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • NurunMTL
      NurunMTL last edited by

      Hi,

      I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that.

      Google says: 
      Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
      https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

      For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none")

      Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not?

      What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites?

      Thanks!

      GaB

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • bridget.randolph
        bridget.randolph last edited by

        Hi,

        Saijo and Bradley are right in saying that hiding elements on a smaller screen should not be an issue (as it's a correct implementation of responsive design). Bear in mind as well that there is a Googlebot and a Smartphone Googlebot, so as long as the Googlebot is seeing what desktop users see and the Smartphone Googlebot (which uses an iPhone5 user agent) is seeing what mobile users see, it shouldn't be a problem.

        The only thing I would add:

        If you are going to use display:none to prevent a user from seeing something when they view your site, it's good to include an option to 'view full site' or 'view desktop site'. Also in that case I would question whether you actually need that content on the desktop site at all? Because best practice is to provide all the same content regardless of device.

        If it's hidden but still accessible to the mobile user (in a collapsible div for instance) there's no cloaking involved so it shouldn't cause a problem.

        As a side note: the Vary HTTP header is really for a dynamically served website (that is, a single URL which checks user agent and then serves the desktop HTML to desktop devices and mobile HTML to mobile devices).

        Hope that helps!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Saijo.George
          Saijo.George last edited by

          The way I see it.

          Google does not have a problem with proper use of things like media queries. More info : https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details . They ONLY have problem with webmasters when the hidden text is only available to search engines for SERP manipulation.

          Read more into the " The Vary HTTP header " bit in the link above and some info from Matt : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6qtaiZRHg&feature=player_detailpage#t=219

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • brad.s.knutson
            brad.s.knutson last edited by

            I understand what you are referring to about having to hide certain elements on smaller screens.  Sometimes not everything fits or flows correctly.

            When this happens, however, I try to hide design elements as opposed to text or links.  I'm also OK with hiding images.  If a block of text or a link seems out of place or doesn't flow properly, I will build a dropdown for it.  I'm sure you've seen mobile sites with dropdown navigation menus.

            I wouldn't leave it to up to Google to interpret what you are doing.  Don't hide any links.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • teamtc

              Do links from subdomains pass the authority and link juice of main domain ?

              Hi, There is a subdomain with a root domain's DA  90. I can earn a backlink from that subdomain. This subdomain is fresh with no traffic yet. Do I get the ranking boost and authority from the subdomain? Example: I can earn a do-follow link from **https://what-is-crm.netlify.app/ **but not from https://netlify.app

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | teamtc
              0
            • ShawnW

              Sitewide nav linking from subdomain to main domain

              I'm working on a site that was heavily impacted by the September core update. You can see in the attached image the overall downturn in organic in 2019 with a larger hit in September bringing Google Organic traffic down around 50%. There are many concerning incoming links from 50-100 obviously spammy porn-related websites to just plain old unnatural links. There was no effort to purchase any links so it's unclear how these are created. There are also 1,000s of incoming external links (most without no-follow and similar/same anchor text) from yellowpages.com. I'm trying to get this fixed with them and have added it to the disavow in the meantime. I'm focusing on internal links as well with a more specific question: If I have a sitewide header on a blog located at blog.domain.com that has links to various sections on domain.com without no-follow tags, is this a possible source of the traffic drops and algorithm impact? The header with these links is on every page of the blog on the previously mentioned subdomain. **More generally, any advice as to how to turn this around? ** The website is in the travel vertical. 90BJKyc

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShawnW
              0
            • Matthew_Edgar

              Hiding ad code from bots

              Hi. I have a client who is about to deploy ads on their site. To avoid bots clicking on those ads and skewing data, the company would like to prevent any bots from seeing any ads and, of course, that includes Googlebot. This seems like it could be cloaking and I'd rather not have a different version of the sites for bots. However, knowing that this will likely happen, I'm wondering how big of a problem it could be if they do this. This change isn't done to manipulate Googlebot's understanding of the page (ads don't affect rankings, etc.) and it will only be a very minimal impact on the page overall. So, if they go down this road and hide ads from bots, I'm trying to determine how big of a risk this could be. I found some old articles discussing this with some suggesting it was a problem and others saying it might be okay in some cases (links below). But I couldn't find any recent articles about this. Wondering if anybody has seen anything new or has a new perspective to share on this issue? Is it a problem if all bots (including Googlebot) are unable to see ads? https://moz.com/blog/white-hat-cloaking-it-exists-its-permitted-its-useful
              https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4535445.htm
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBO-1ETf_dY

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Matthew_Edgar
              0
            • HuptechWebseo

              Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018

              Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo
              0
            • seoman10

              Pinging Links

              Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it.  Is it considered dangerous/spamy?

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman10
              0
            • RosemaryB

              Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam

              I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
              Top PR Firms
              Best PR Firms
              Leading PR Firms
              CyberSecurity PR Firms
              Cyber Security PR Firms
              Technology PR Firms
              PR Firm
              Government PR Firms
              Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
              Rosemary

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
              0
            • DCochrane

              Rollover design & SEO

              After reading this article http://www.seomoz.org/blog/designing-for-seo some questions came up from my developers. In the article it says "One potential solution to this problem is a mouse-over. Initially when viewed, the panel will look as it does on the left hand side (exactly as the designer want it), yet when a user rolls over the image the panel changes into what you see on the right hand side (exactly what the SEO wants)." My developers say" Having text in the rollovers is almost like hiding text and everyone knows in SEO that you should never hide text. "In the article he explains that it is not hidden text since its visible & readable by the engines.What are everyone's thoughts on this? Completely acceptable or iffy?Thanks

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DCochrane
              0
            • shags38

              Why would links that were deleted by me 3 months ago still show up in reports?

              I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin. So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run. So why would these links still be reported? How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?). In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away. Looking for some insight here please. cheers, Mike

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shags38
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.