CSS Hiding Text - Does this matter to search engine crawlers
-
Hello,
I'm working on a site and a developer is using CSS to mask crawlable links below. Then, java, advanced search links go on top of this. So, if you disable Java, but have CSS enabled, you don't have a lefthand nav. With both CSS and Java disabled you have a fully crawlable website.
Is this a red flag? I understand a user without java would have a problem since most people don't disable CSS. But, is this a problem for search crawlers?
Thanks!
-
Google can index and render both CSS and JavaScript, and has an uncanny ability to sort out bad intentions, so if you're trying to mask links with these, Google will (eventually) figure it out. Your developer's assumption is wrong. Google has come a long with with this, and can even index some AJAX content (when JavaScript loads additional content to a page from the server).
Lots of navigation use accordions and other widgets that will display or hide navigation links depending on the page state. That's fine. Just don't go out of your way to hide links.
-
Thanks for taking the time to reply. This is what I thought..,.so you're saying that Google can access/activate the CSS files? I think our developer assumes that Google doesn't activate the styles, so the links underneath would be fine. Thanks!
-
It is, you must serve the same content to user then you do to bots.
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
-
Stop Google indexing entire website based on search location
OK - bear with me... We have a .co.uk website. However, we only want it indexing in the US Google and NOT the UK Google. Is there a way of configuring this in Search Console /Webmaster tools?
Technical SEO | | AbsoluteDesign0 -
Is alt text inside an img tag inside an h1 the same weight as text directly inside the h1?
Right now I use a background image and CSS to tie the h1 tag to my logo on each page. However, I am concerned that may not be best practice. Plus, I am interested in using schema markup on my logo. So, my question is, if I use an image with alt text inside my h1 tag, will the alt text carry as much weight as a text-based h1?
Technical SEO | | Avalara0 -
Should component pages be visible in the search result?
Hi everyone, My question is suppose i have a blog having 200 pages arranged in footer like seomoz blog and when i move to 2nd page and say the url is http://www.seomoz.org/blog?page=2 and when i search exact url on google should this page be visible in search result or not. Since all component pages of seomoz blog are visible, i think this should not be a problem but when i see other popular blogs like SEJ and seroundtable none of their component pages are visible in search result. By the way i am using rel=prev and next but not robots: noindex, follow
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
Is it okay to use anchor text almost exclusively for inbound links?
We are not spammy - each link is earned through a long process of relationship building and targeted guest post writing. Because of this, we like each link to have anchor text and they don't point to the same page or have the same anchor text. Is this still something to be worried about? Do we still need to include plain URLs (wwww.example.com) for some of those links?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
The search button on my site no longer works. Any fixes?
I have a wordpress site (can be found at theFlooringGirl.com). On all the pages, there is a search button so you can search for words on the site, but it no longer seems to work. My original webdesigner put it in, and I can't seem where to find it/where to edit/fix it. I finally found something that mentions "search" in the widget section and it is in the tool bar, but I can't find where/how to edit/fix it. BTW, I do have two other smaller sites that have this button and it still works there...so if I could find where to edit, I could theoretically copy and paste the code...if I knew where). Any advice? Thx.
Technical SEO | | Jborgueta0 -
No Search Results Found - Should this return status code 404?
A question came up today on how to correctly serve the right status code on pages where no search results are found. I did a couple searches on some major eccomerce and news sites and they were ALL serving status code 200 for No Search Results Found http://www.zappos.com/dsfasdgasdgadsg http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sdafasdklgjasdklgjsjdjkl http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dfjakljgdkslagklasd&_sacat=0 http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=sdgadgdsagas&x=0&y=0&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=sdagasdgasdgasg I thought I read somewhere were it was recommended to serve a status code 404 on these types of pages. Based on what I found above, all sites were serving a 200, so it appears this may not be the best practice. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | WEB-IRS0 -
Implementing Schema within Existing CSS tags
In implementing Schema with a site using CSS and containing existing tags, I want to be sure that we are (#1) using the tags effectively when used within a product detail template and (#2) not actually harming ourselves by telling Google that all products are named or described by the SS tag and not actually the product name or description (which obviously could be disasterous). An example of what we are looking at implementing is the following: Old: <ss:value source="$product.name"></ss:value> New: <ss:value source="$product.name"></ss:value> Old: <ss:value source="$product.description">New: <ss:value source="$product.description"></ss:value> Basically, is Schema at the point where the SS tag be replaced (in the eyes of the search engines) with the actual text and not the tag itself?</ss:value>
Technical SEO | | TechMama0 -
Title tag same text as H1?
What is the group's opinion on whether or not the <title>tag should have the exact same text as the <h1> tag on the same page? Obviously both should contain the phrase that page is optimized for but is it better to have them be variants of each other, or both the same and maybe equal to the key phrase that page is optimized for? Thanks.</p> <p>Example:</p> <blockquote style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace;"> <p>title: los angeles blue widgets</p> <p>h1: los angeles blue widgets</p> </blockquote> <p>Or,</p> <blockquote style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace;"> <p>title: los angeles blue widgets</p> <p>h1: blue widgets in los angeles</p> </blockquote> <p>Where the page is trying to optimize for "los angeles blue widgets"</p></title>
Technical SEO | | scanlin0