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
-
Google displaying root domain instead of country locale
Hi, For many months now, Google refuses to display the relevant locale in many markets, and instead shows the root domain as number 1 result. The country locale isn't even in the SERP in some countries(!). This only applies for branded searches. It appears Google is treating the root domain as an international landing page or something, while this isn't the case - visitors get redirected automatically based on their Geo-IP to the relevant country locale if they enter the root domain, there is no "flag selector" that people or bots can choose. Site: example.com If someone searches for "example" from Google Canada, they should be met with example.com/en-ca/ as the first result for branded searches. Instead, example.com is ranking, and example.com/en-ca/ is nowhere to be found. This problem is in all our English markets; Canada, India and UK. For non-english countries, branded searches return the relevant locale, but the root domain is often the 2nd result as well. This isn't as bad as the case with the English markets, but still. Any help whatsoever would be greatly appreciated, or if you can recommend great reading assets. I have researched this thoroughly and tried different technical solutions, but nothing has worked so far. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeoVegas0 -
Changing Ecommerce Site Display style will it impact on seo & performance?
Hello Expert, Do redesign website will affect seo? At initial level drop in visitor, pageviews? Actually I am redesign my ecommerce site but we are not changing 1) url's 2) we are not changing content 3) we are not changing server 4) we are not changing navigation. We are changing display style at homepage, category page, subcategory page, product page, checkout step. So still it will impact on website visitors & pageviews? 2) How google will react on int 3) How visitor will react? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Johny123450 -
How to fix you brand search on google? Random urls not categorys display
Hello, you know when you search for your brand on google for example nike.com . It shows usually the pages that are importan. Our brand however shows totally random URLs under the brand. There should be however our category pages. How can i add those? Some html code i presume?
Technical SEO | | advertisingcloud0 -
Google displaying different meta descriptions for the same URL but different keyword
Hi All, A quick question that may even have a quick answer: Why would Google display a different meta description for the same URL for a different keyword? For example I enter 2 of our similar keywords into Google: KEYWORD A | META DESCRIPTION A DISPLAYED | URL A KEYWORD B | META DESCRIPTION B DISPLAYED | URL A Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
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 -
Site is not displaying in Search Engines
My site is www.deoveritas.com it is in magento framework and it has a blog section in wordpress. When I enter Site:www.deoveroitas.com in google it shows all blog links in search result. The homepage and other innerpages are not getting displayed in search results at all. I even tried searching for www.deoveritas.com/about-us and it displays blogs in result. Checked Google webmaster fetch as google and it was index and successful. Can you please help me with this. Is my site de-indexed or banned by Google? the same issue is on Bing and Yahoo search engines too. Please help Thank you.
Technical SEO | | tpt.com0 -
Advice on display this content on my page for search engines
Hi, my website http://www.in2town.co.uk/Holiday-News is about bringing travel and holiday news to our readers of our lifestyle magazine but i am having problems at the moment with the layout. What i mean by this is, i have written content on the page as an introduction so google knows what this section of the site is about but to be honest it looks rubbish with having the introduction there and i would like to know if i am doing the right thing by having the content there for google to know what my site is about. I have tried taking it away and noticed i dropped in the rankings and when i have put it back up i go up in the rankings, can anyone please give me some advice over this issue
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Rel = author display issue
I want to enter some products as blog posts. I don't want users to see the post info, but do want SE's to see rel="author". I can do this by setting display to "none" in a CSS style. The post info does not appear in the browser but is still in the page source. Will search engines be able to see the post info?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0