This Is Not Hidden Text, Or is it? Options

[amabaie]

I have taken on a new client, and like all clients that have an image-only home page, I recommended below-the-fold text. (Clearly visible to both visitors who might feel like reading a bit before enteriung the site, but not spoling the beautiful works of art that pass for a home page).

I discovered in the source code that there already are many paragraphs of text on the home page. I looked again at the page, but I could not find them. I pulled the cursor across the page to see if something showed up when highlighting and to my surprise the cursor kept going down. It turns out all the text is in plain view...except that the scrollbar has been disabled, so 99.9% of the people would not think to scroll down the way I did.

My first thought is that this is hidden text...but technically it is not. I know what recommendation I plan to make to my client, but I wonder what others think of this - hidden text or legitimate technique?

[Randy]

I'd go with Hidden, David.

By the strict definition they're showing something different to the average user than what spiders see. So if the engines caught on to the tactic I would expect they'd try to do something to devalue the page.

[chrishirst]

well strictly speaking it's not hidden just inaccessible (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) but I don't think it falls in to a legitimate technique either

[1dmf]

I'd say that this is a clever manipulation of the definition of visible text.

By all intent and purposes, it is visible to both visiotr and SE's, I'm not sure G! guidelines state a specifric method that must be used to view on page content ie. 'Scrollbar' , not every UA has a graphical interface (GUI) , such as screen readers and it would most certainly be read out to the surfer in this situation.

And again , you have shown that with a standard browser the 'user' is able to get to the on page content, even if not by a 'standard' method.

You also seem to indicate that the text is not 'hidden' , ie. text is not the same colour as background, so this is not cloaking.

whether if the 'eye' of G! was to manualy apraise the site and deem it as being 'black hat' , only they could tell you. As using CSS to make content invisible to the user is considered cloaking and perhaps disabling the scrollbar is a deliberate attempt to use CSS for cloaking purposes.

But I get the feeling most would feel it as not being done for the 'visitor' but for SE's and that is always considered a no no.

[amabaie]

Wow. Some pretty quick opinions here, and it had not occurred to me that voice readers would catch the text.

Anyway, in the meantime I blogged about this and I just wanted to share that here too:

www.seo-writer.com/blog/2007/10/25/hidden-text-trick/

[Jill]

It's one of those things that would probably not get caught, but which probably would not pass muster in a manual review by a spam team at Google.

[redstarweb]

...I recommended below-the-fold text.......

As a fresh member of this forum, I got interested in this topic.
Perhaps I say something stupid now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/thinking.gif) , but what exactly is "below-the-fold"?
If I am using a screen resolution of 800x600, or 1024x768 or 1280x1024 (or more), the "below-the-fold" would be different for all these screen settings, or am I wrong?
So how would the developer of this image-homepage know which screen resolution visitors use, on different operating systems, different browsers and different devices (PDA's, Mobile phones, Palm PC's, etc.). That would be a hack of a source code. (I doubt if he could manage this, because he has to use at least a vector based image for automatic resizing).

In other words, is this example really a SEO No-no (for search engines), because some people would see (part of) the text "above the fold" if they use a high screen resolution.

[Jill]

Redstarweb, you are correct.

And besides, text "below the fold" is not spam. People know how to scroll.

Spam would be text placed where it was only there for the search engines. That would be a judgement call by the engines themselves and most likely for something like this would need human review for them to decide.

[Conspicuous]

Wow. Some pretty quick opinions here, and it had not occurred to me that voice readers would catch the text.

Anyway, in the meantime I blogged about this and I just wanted to share that here too:

www.seo-writer.com/blog/2007/10/25/hidden-text-trick/

My advice is to report your competitor to Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask right away. And don’t even think about doing the same thing…because someone else might report you both!

Are you and your client taking steps to be more responsible Internet citizens?

[rolf]

I think this is totally a slippery interpretation of the term 'hidden text' - ironically, such things may work in a court of law but in this instance it's Googles game and Google's ball so if Google decides you can't play for any reason they want then there's not a lot anyone can do about it. That being the case, I don't think a clever interpretation is going to get much mileage.

Having made that disclaimer, in response to Redstarweb's comment...

So how would the developer of this image-homepage know which screen resolution visitors use, on different operating systems, different browsers and different devices

This would be pretty simple to achieve with pretty much any scripting language and an invisible spacer gif or some CSS.

[Ignoramus]

From a human point of view, if there's a lot of unnecessary blank space below the image and before the text it's spam - and deserves to be treated as such. Scrollbars enabled or not.