Would using display:none; to hide a section of text effect SEO negatively?
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I have seen several sites that put a div feature at the bottom of a page to hide content. If you click on the button, it will extend the page down and be loaded with paragraphs of text rich with keywords.
Does anyone know is this is viewed as a negative with Google?
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The text is picked up using a text only browser so I would suggest that Google won't have a problem crawling the content.
Here are the current guidelines from Google
Hope this helps
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Initially i would be inclined to suggest anything that can be termed as "hidden" would be advised as a big no-no from the google point of view as everyone has said so far.
Having said that - in the source of the page you have put there - the content that is hidden is fully visible - which would suggest it is not as hidden as it might be if it were being called in from an external source. Would be interesting to here a definitive answer on this particular case though.
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So here is a site that I notice uses what I am referring to...https://www.starfiredirect.com
Go to the very bottom of the home page and notice the red bar, click it. It just shows additional information and testimonials. This site is ranking very well and very fast for popular phrases. I have been trying to study what they do, and have noticed this little trick.
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Depending on your particular usage, this can be fine - i.e. jQuery sliders hode the slides that are not shown at the current time. As EGOL has mentioned though, you never know what Google will penalize tomorrow.
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I agree... Google doesn't like sites that show visitors and robots a different page.
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Lots of previous questions on display:none.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=display%3Anone&x=0&y=0
If it was my site, I would not hide anything from the visitor. You never know what google will be looking for tomorrow.
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