6 replies to this topic

[laura]

I've read a bit about hidden divs & not to use them for spam, etc.

But is there any word on whether or not legitimate hidden divs are ok to use - we want to start implementing them but want to make sure it's not going to hurt our pages.

Example: Page has high-level product information. Click on read more & get hidden div content in the page with the rest of the info about the product. Titally legitimate.

1. Will search engines index this hidden div content?
2. Might our ranks be lower for using a hidden div? (rather than text in the page let's say).

[Shane]

1. Absolutely. We've used them for a long time for navigation links with no problem at all.

2. I've never heard or had any experience one way or the other. I would assume not until they start processing CSS. Would be pretty easy to test, though.

[laura]

thanks shane!

[Randy]

There's no negative effect at this point Laura. I rather doubt there will ever be any truly negative effect since the usage you laid out is exactly how hidden div's should be legitimately employed.

See, that's one of the issues that always have to enter the minds of the search engine folks. It would be very, very simple for them to detect hidden divs, and even simpler to institute a penalty if they found some.

But if they did that, they would be negatively affecting at least as many totally legitimate sites as they would be those sites that are using the hidden divs for nefarious purposes. Even if they could parse the (typical) JS routines that make the divs unhide themselves so that the legit folks didn't get filtered, it would be childs play for the spammers to change their sites enough to provide that code, but not make it a real option for users.

My best guess?

Sometime down the road the engines will start detecting hidden and visible divs, simply because the spamming element that uses them is a growing one. My hunch is that about the worst they'll do however is start ignoring any text that is placed inside the hidden divs for ranking purposes.

Which would defeat the spammers attempts to game the engines, but not penalize everybody else who are using hidden divs for a legitimate purpose.

[redsonia!]

Sorry, another stupid newbie question. What are hidden divs?

[qwerty]

It's a way of creating hidden text. You can set it to be hidden, to be the same color as its background, positioned underneath something, or even outside the browser window. This can either be to spam the search engines (because the hiding is done in the style sheet instead of the HTML, they're less likely to get that it's hidden) or you can put it to legitimate use by setting certain conditions to make it visible, like when a user clicks or mouses over a particular area. Dynamic menus that are controlled purely by CSS involve hidden text that becomes unhidden under the right circumstances.

[redsonia!]

Thanks, qwerty. I'm not familiar with CSS so I couldn't figure out what legitimate purpose it would have.