How search engines look at collapse content in mobile while on desktop it open by default?
-
Hello everyone!
To have a mobile friendly UX we chose to collapse some of the page content.
On the desktop it is in open mode by default and user can see the whole content.
Does the search engines see the content even if it's collapse? is the collapse mode on the mobile only can hurt us with SERP ranking? -
Thanks Bridget. I think the question eventually is this:
If there is a mobile page with hidden content (e.g., collapsed) - and assuming it's hidden in a way that is viewable to Google crawler - does that content get lower importance in ranking even though it is not hidden in desktop?
Example:
- Desktop version of the page has "Keyword1" visibly displayed.
- Mobile version of same page has "Keyword1" hidden in a collapsed view.
Will the mobile version be better ranked for "Keyword1" if it will not be hidden? Even though it's not hidden in the desktop version?
If it's hidden in both versions then my assumption is that the answer is yes based on this statement from Google's John Mueller (November 2014):
"From our point of view, it's always a tricky problem when we send a user to a page where we know this content is actually hidden. Because the user will see perhaps the content in the snippet, they'll click through the page, and say, well, I don't see where this information is on this page. I feel kind of almost misled to click on this to actually get in there." https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.htmlBut I'm not sure if that's still true when it's hidden only for mobile.
Appreciate everyone's thoughts on this.
-
I have to disagree with the above.
Google absolutely can view mobile content, in fact they have a separate crawler that spoofs a mobile user agent in order to crawl mobile content. They may not have a separate mobile index of that content, but that has nothing to do with whether they view, crawl, and index mobile pages. We know that they do, in fact, given that whether a page is mobile-friendly is a rankings factor for mobile search results.
To answer your question - having the content collapsed shouldn't be a problem as long as the content is viewable with Javascript and CSS disabled. If Javascript is required to expand the collapsed content, the mobile crawler may not be able to see this content. You may want to test the page(s) with the Mobile-friendly Testing Tool and also try a Fetch and Render (for Smartphone) of the mobile page, to see how Google sees the page(s).
-
This is spot-on correct.
-
Currently, Google only looks at the desktop version of the page for it's index so collapsing for mobile would have no effect on rankings.
In general, Google says that hidden/collapsible content is given less weight than visible since its not considered as important for users to see.
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
-
Duplicate content on product pages
Hi, We are considering the impact when you want to deliver content directly on the product pages. If the products were manufactured in a specific way and its the same process across 100 other products you might want to tell your readers about it. If you were to believe the product page was the best place to deliver this information for your readers then you could potentially be creating mass content duplication. Especially as the storytelling of the product could equate to 60% of the page content this could really flag as duplication. Our options would appear to be:1. Instead add the content as a link on each product page to one centralised URL and risk taking users away from the product page (not going to help with conversion rate or designers plans)2. Put the content behind some javascript which requires interaction hopefully deterring the search engine from crawling the content (doesn't fit the designers plans & users have to interact which is a big ask)3. Assign one product as a canonical and risk the other products not appearing in search for relevant searches4. Leave the copy as crawlable and risk being marked down or de-indexed for duplicated contentIts seems the search engines do not offer a way for us to serve this great content to our readers with out being at risk of going against guidelines or the search engines not being able to crawl it.How would you suggest a site should go about this for optimal results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux2 -
Internal Duplicate Content Question...
We are looking for an internal duplicate content checker that is capable of crawling a site that has over 300,000 pages. We have looked over Moz's duplicate content tool and it seems like it is somewhat limited in how deep it crawls. Are there any suggestions on the best "internal" duplicate content checker that crawls deep in a site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdawson091 -
How to best handle expired content?
Similar to the eBay situation with "expired" content, what is the best way to approach this? Here are a few examples. With an e-commerce site, for a seasonal category of "Christmas" .. what's the best way to handle this category page after it's no longer valid? 404? 301? leave it as-is and date it by year? Another example. If I have an RSS feed of videos from a big provider, say Vevo, what happens when Vevo tells me to "expire" a video that it's no longer available? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDatSB0 -
Different website is shown when searched for content
Hello, Have any body experienced this situation, When i take a content from http://www.creativethemes.net e.g. from home page and search it on google, search results shows FMEextensions with that content. FME had never ever used that data, it can not be found in sources files either, also this data was never written and placed on FME site but it is shown with FME How can this happen and what do you suggest to resolve it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
Is this will post Duplicated Content
I have domain let say abcshoesonlinestore.com and inside pages of this abcshoesonlinestore.com is ranking very well such as affiliate page, knowledgebase page and other pages, HOWEVER i would like to change my home page and product page to shorter url which abcshoes.com and keep those inside page like www.abashoesonlinestore.com/affiliate or www.abcshoesonlinestore.com/knowledgebase as it is - will this pose duplicate content? This is my plan to do it: the home page and product page will be www.abcshoes.com and when people click www.abcshoes.com/affiliate it will redirect 301 to abcshoesonlinestore.com/affiliate HOWEVER if someone type abcshoesonlinestore.com or abcshoesonlinestore.com/product it will redirect to abcshoes.com or its product page itself (i want to use 302 instead 301 (ASSUMING if the homapage or product page have manual penalization or anything bad we want to leave it behind and start fresh JUST assume because i read some post that 301 will carry any bad thing to new site too) The reason i do not want to 301 from abcshoesonlinestore.com to abcshoes.com is because those many pages is ranking top 3 in GOOGLE ( i worry will lose this ranking since this bringing traffic for us) Is this good idea or bad idea or any better idea or should i try to see the outcome 🙂 - the only concern is from abcshoesonlinestore.com to abcshoes.com will pose as duplicate content if i do not use 301 - or can i use google webmaster tools to remove the home page and product page for abcshoesonlinestore.com can we tell google that? PS: (home page and product page will have new revise content and minor design change) but inside page will stay the same design Please give me some advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | owen20110 -
Duplicate content for area listings
Hi, I was slightly affected by the panda update on the 14th oct generaly dropping by about 5-8 spots in the serps for my main keywords, since then I've been giving my site a good looking over. On a site I've got city listings urls for certain widget companys, the thing is many areas and thus urls will have the same company listed. What would be the best way of solving this duplicate content as google may be seeing it? I was thinking of one page per company and prominenly listing the areas they operate so still hopefully get ranked for area searches. But i'd be losing the city names in the url as I've got them now for example: mywidgetsite.com/findmagicwidgets/new-york.html mywidgetsite.com/findmagicwidgets/atlanta.html Any ideas on how best to proceed? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetGeek0 -
Mobile subdomain recommendations - Mobile SEO
My company is moving forward with creating a subdomain for mobile visitors (m.examplesite.com). I know there is much discussion on subdomain vs one url with different style sheets. That ship has sailed and the subdomain is the way we are proceeding. Google appears to recommend leaving both sites open to the normal Googlebot and redirecting the mobile bot to the mobile site (as we will be redirecting mobile visitors to the mobile subdomain). Has anyone had experience with this. Any duplicate content issues? Does anyone feel strongly that the normal Googlebot should be blocked from the mobile site (this seems to go against Google's recommendations)? It seems like another option is to use the canonical tag and let the search engines know the traditional site is the canonical page/version. Any recommendations? Any other issues that should be considered?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | btdavis0 -
Duplicate page Content
There has been over 300 pages on our clients site with duplicate page content. Before we embark on a programming solution to this with canonical tags, our developers are requesting the list of originating sites/links/sources for these odd URLs. How can we find a list of the originating URLs? If you we can provide a list of originating sources, that would be helpful. For example, our the following pages are showing (as a sample) as duplicate content: www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=11 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=12 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=15 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=2 "How did you get all those duplicate urls? I have tried to google the "contact us", "news", "video" pages. I didn't get all those duplicate pages. The page id=87 on the most of the duplicate pages are not supposed to be there. I was wondering how the visitors got to all those duplicate pages. Please advise." Note, the CMS does not create this type of hybrid URLs. We are as curious as you as to where/why/how these are being created. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dlemieux0