CSS user select and any potential affect on SEO
-
Hi everyone and thank you in advance for your helpful comments.
We have a client who is concerned about copying of content from their site because it has happened a few times in the last few years. We have explained that the content is essentially publicly available and that using the CSS selector user-select to prevent selection of text will really only prevent the technically limited users from working out how to get the text. He is happy that it will at least stop some people. So the question is would there be any way that this would have an affect on SEO? We would make an assumption that it doesnt but putting it out there for some feedback.
Cheers
Eddie
-
Nope, no effect, as you suspect, Eddie. That kind of attempt at copy-blocking doesn't change the way the content is available in the DOM of the page (which is why it's so ineffective) so has no effect on crawling/indexing.
You can prove this for yourself by going to a page and right-clicking to select the browser Inspect mode. This mode shows the actual rendered DOM of the page that the search engines are reading, and you'll see the content is easily accessible. The other option is to do a Fetch and Render request from within the site's Google Search Console and it will also show you what content Google can see.
That what you were looking for?
Paul
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
-
Schema for Banks and SEO
I'm researching Schema opportunities for a bank, but besides the shema markup available today (like bankorcreditunion) and developments with FIBO, I can find no answer as to the effect of tagging interest rates and such in terms of SERP/CTR performance or visibility. Does anyone have a case study to share or some insight on the matter?
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Website analysis for SEO
Hi, We have been trying to gain ranking for 7 keywords for a year now but have been unsuccessful We are not sure where we are going wrong, if someone could please help us out, we are happy to pay for your time.
Technical SEO | | mframing0 -
Have hostings location an impact on SEO
Hello everybody 🙂 I know, that some years ago it was important that you host your site in the same country where your target audience was in relation to SEO. Because Google used that to find out which country your target audience was. But is this still important and have it an influence today regarding to SEO? Hope there is someone who can help 🙂
Technical SEO | | JoLinda910 -
Mobile SEO for mobile site
Hey there! I own a desktop website and just now finishe building a mobile site ( not a responsive design one) and I wish to start ranking my site on mobile serch result page. due to the automatic redirection from desktop website to the mobile site im confused: where should link to in order to SEO my mobile site? should i link to domin.com and assume the link juice is passing on? or should i link to m.domim.com?
Technical SEO | | logophone0 -
How can I add an additional user
I want to give access to this account to an additional user. Is this possible?
Technical SEO | | MishconAdmin0 -
Name Servers & SEO
We have decided to create a few blogs and will eventually be linking to some of our clients. I have domain privacy and different class C addresses for each of my domains. But the name servers area all the same. Ex: If we create an article for one client on all 5 blogs, will the name servers be a problem?
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
The best way to organize a gallery for SEO?
I need to redo the following gallery
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept
http://goo.gl/PFvjE
because besides the fact that it looks ugly, it's an SEO mess. Since all the pages are comprised of images, and the only text is the navigation, I'm getting duplicate content issues. I tried adding a little paragraph of text on some of the pages, but this thing needs a total revamp. My main question is this: is that menu being repeated on all the pages really a good thing? What good is it to, say, on the fire patches page, to have a menu that includes all these keywords for sports patches? Would it be better to just have a main gallery page that lists the main patch types: applique, motorcycle, Scouting, ect, and then once you get to that page, list all the different sub categories?0 -
How new Instant Pages Affect Analytics?
I am sure everyone around here is aware of Instant Pages that Google introduced at Inside Search Event. How does it affect Analytics? Since the page is pre-loading, does that get recorded as a visitor? If the user doesn’t click on the link, will that impact the bounce rate?
Technical SEO | | IM_Learner1