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
-
Role of Robots.txt and Search Console parameters settings
Hi, wondering if anyone can point me to resources or explain the difference between these two. If a site has url parameters disallowed in Robots.txt is it redundant to edit settings in Search Console parameters to anything other than "Let Googlebot Decide"?
Technical SEO | | LivDetrick0 -
Australian search - ZERO visibility and stumped
Fair warning, this is going to be long, but necessary to explain the situation and what has been done. I will take ANY suggestions, even if I have tried them already. We have a sister site in Australia, targeting Australian traffic. I have inherited what seems to be an incredible rat's nest. I've fixed over two dozen issues, but still haven't seemed to address the root cause. NOTE: Core landing pages have weak keyword targeting. I don't expect much here until I fix this. The main issues I'm trying to resolve first are with the unusual US-based targeting, and the inability of the homepage to rank for anything. The site is www[dot]castleford[dot]com[dot]au. Here's the rundown on what's going on: Problems: The site ranks for four times as many keywords in the US as it does in Australia. The site ranks for a grand total of 5 keywords on the first page for AU keywords. The homepage, while technically optimized on-page for "content marketing agency", and with content through MarketMuse, has historically ranked between 60-100, despite having a fairly strong DA with fairly weak competitors, based on AHREFs keyword difficulty, and Moz keyword difficulty. Oddly, the ranking has gone up to 5-7 for three day spurts over the past year. Infrequent indexing of homepage (used to be every 2-3 weeks, I've gotten that down to 1 week). Sequence of events: November 2017 - they made some changes to their URLs - some on the blog and some on the top nav LPs. Redirects seem okay. November 2017 - Substantial number of lost referring domains, not many seem to be quality. January 2018 - total number of AU ranking keywords more than halved. May/June 2018 - added a follow inbound link sitewide to an external site that they created. 20k inbound links with same anchor text to homepage. Site has a total of 24k inbound links. July-Sep 2018 - total number of US ranking keywords halved November 10 - I walked into this mess. What's been done: Reduced site load speed by over 150% (it was around 20 seconds). Create sitemap (100 entry batching) and submit to GSC. Improved MarketMuse score for the homepage. Changed language from "en-US" to "en-AU" Fetch and render - content is all crawlable and indexed properly. Changed site architecture for top nav core landing pages to establish clear hierarchy. All version of GSC created, non-www and www http, and non www https and www https Site crawl - normal amount of 404s, nothing stands out as substantial. http to https redirect okay. Robots.txt updated and okay. Checked GSC international targeting, confirmed AU. No manual links penalty I'm clearly stumped and could use some insights. Thanks to everyone in advance, if you can find time.
Technical SEO | | Brafton-Marketing0 -
Brushing up on my SEO skills - how do I check my website to see if Javascript is blocking search engines from crawling the links within a javascript-enabled drop down menu?
I set my user agent in my Chrome browser to Googlebot and I disable javascript within my Chrome settings, but then what?
Technical SEO | | MagnitudeSEO0 -
Search Term not appearing in On-Page Grader but is in code?
Hi, I have never had this issue in the past, but I am working on a website currently which is - http://hrfoundations.co.uk I didn't develop this website and the pages are in separate folders on the FTP which I have never come across before but hey ho. Anyway I have added the search term (HR Consultancy West Midlands) to the about us page in the h1, title and description however when I run the On-Page Grader it only says that I have entered it within the body which I haven't even done yet. When I view the page source it has defiantly been uploaded and the search terms are there, I have tried checking the spelling incase I spelt it incorrectly and I still can't seem to find the issue. Has anyone else experience this in the past, I'm going to go away now and check the code for any unclosed divs etc to see if that may be causing any issue's. Thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | chrissmithps0 -
No Local & Global Search Volumes Next to Competition%
Hi everyone at Moz, I am quite happy with the Moz tool but am surprised that search volumes do not seem available... What is the current status of the situation described in the Q&A below? http://moz.com/community/q/why-does-the-keyword-difficulty-tool-shows-no-search-volume When handling avg. of 1000 keywords and paying for a tool to calculate volume, competition & KEI I find it weird and annoying to find this information is not available. Does this mean that for each keyword one would have to enter it in the Google adwords keyword tool Thanks for your much needed help on this matter as this is difficult to sell to my clients and I need to make final Keyword choices soon and have no data availble. Greetings, Fries
Technical SEO | | Fries0 -
How does Progressive Loading, aka what Facebook does, impact proper search indexation?
My client is planning on integrating progressive loading into their main product level pages (those pages most important to conversions and revenue). I am not skilled on "progressive laoding" but was told this is what Facebook does. Currently, the site's pages are tabbed and use Ajax. Is there any negative impact by changing this up by including progressive loading? If anyone can help me understand what this is and how it might impact a site from an SEO perspective, please let me know. thanks a ton!! Janet
Technical SEO | | ACNINTERACTIVE1 -
How to add a disclaimer to a site but keep the content accessible to search robots?
Hi, I have a client with a site regulated by the UK FSA (Financial Services Authority). They have to display a disclaimer which visitor must accept before browsing. This is for real, not like the EU cookie compliance debacle 🙂 Currently the site 302 redirects anyone not already cookied (as having accepted) to a disclaimer page/form. Do you have any suggestions or examples of how to require acceptance while maintaining accessibility? I'm not sure just using a jquery lightbox would meet the FSA's requirements, as it wouldn't be shown if JS was not enabled. Thanks, -Jason
Technical SEO | | GroupM_APAC0 -
Google search result going to a page that I did not put on my site
Hi, I am seeing a very strange result in google for my site. When doing a search for the term "london reflexology" my site comes up 18th in the results. But when I click the link or check the URL it shows up as: http://www.reflexologyonline.co.uk/reflexologyonline.php?Action=Webring This is not right at all. It looks like some sort of cloaking but I am not sure. I am new to SEO and I do not know why goole is showing this URL that does not exist on my site and of witch the content is totally wrong. Can anyone please help with this? See the 2 linked images for more details. It seems to me the site might be hacked or something to that effect. Please help.... jyJdP.png 71Mf4.png
Technical SEO | | RupDog0