I appreciate hidden text and links do not go down well with the Jedis at Google, and understand the reasons behind it. But what if your site uses hidden text for legitimate reasons? We have some hidden divs on our pages which allow the user to click "more information" or whatever and have a CSS popup with the details. Is this also frowned upon? How would Google tell the difference between spammy hidden text and legitimate uses?
I don't think hidden texts like DHTML menus are against Google's TOS. If so all dynamic content over the web will be in qustion, including the vB of this forum too
I had the same concern and implemented it anyway. Just make sure you don't keyword stuff it and use a good visible to hidden ratio. I got PHP to calculate the number of words I am actually displaying and based on that it calculates the max I want hidden and off the top of my head, I used a max 2:1 visible to hidden ratio. Never got penalized for it as far as I can tell. And if they do it would indeed be ridiculous. A lot of tech sites have tabs where you can see the specs, intro, pics etc. They're all JS/CSS layers as well. They seem to rank well too. Just don't abuse it.
Thanks for the advice both of you - I haven't used many hidden divs at all so it sounds like I will be okay. It certainly isn't stuffed with keywords.
I agree with tops30 they won't get penalized if they did many of the wonderful sites may go down... Manish
I agree that hidden text can be useful in some cases. Skip links etc... However, I would try and do without any hidden text to be sure not to be penalized. Belive I read somewhere that Matt Cutts mentioned that Google currently doesn't penalize people for using hidden skip links, but that they very well may be in the future. I have 2 skip links in the header a blog of mine. They are for text browsers and the like, and wouldn't have to be visible to the normal CSS enabled browsers. But since I don't want to risk any penalty I do not hide them. This is the blog. Internet Programming Blog
Kurtsfar - I love your pelican, did you draw him yourself? I do serve up exactly the same content for search engines and users. I can think of a few technical reasons why I'd like to change that, but its far too risky IMO. The reason I have hidden divs is for magnified information - we have to cram quite a bit on a page so we have a magnifying glass that can be clicked to enlarge a chunk of information. User feedback has been good, and it sounds like we're okay for search engines. Thanks for the heads-up with Mr. Cutts' comment though Kurtsfar