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What you did is proofing that google indexes hidden text. What you did not proof is how that impacts your ranking. Google will know that this text is hidden, al

by donmb 11y ago

What you did is proofing that google indexes hidden text. What you did not proof is how that impacts your ranking. Google will know that this text is hidden, although it is indexed and that is what is important.

IgorPartola 11y ago
I suspect there will always be a way to hide the text in a way that a search engine won't be able to detect. You can do this without applying any properties directly to the element containing text (raise other elements above it), hide it with JavaScript, or any number of such techniques.
- rezamoaiandin 11y ago
  I believe Google is moving towards graphical understanding of the text as well and it should be able to render the pages and see what is going on the page... those days will soon be over and technical excellency in SEO will talk.
  - IgorPartola 11y ago
    What if you use custom blank fonts? Or simply detect the User Agent and serve a different CSS file?
    - leni536 11y ago
      Or detect the user agent and simply serve different content? I'm pretty sure that Google penalties this though.
      - lloyddobbler 11y ago
        Yep. Here you go: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 Here's the full "Don't do this sh!t" article from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769#quality_guidelines https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769#quality_g...
    - nulluk 11y ago
      I think its known Google can masquerade as a "normal" visitor if it suspects you of cloaking (non identifying UA string and coming from a non disclosed google crawl IP) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en I think they also use this to notify you in webmastertools when/if your site is hacked and is doing it to avoid detection by the normal user.
ricardonunez 11y ago
Exactly. I see many comments here about hidden text, switching user agent, css and bunch of things that don't work anymore. The reason why we used to use that stuff was because Google used to read the whole page and use Keyword Density as one of the many ranking factors. Since those factors aren't used anymore and you can also get penalized, there's no reason to do it. Unless you want a page with just one picture and no text, but still get the benefit of the content, there's no reason to do it.

by donmb 11y ago

IgorPartola 11y ago

I suspect there will always be a way to hide the text in a way that a search engine won't be able to detect. You can do this without applying any properties directly to the element containing text (raise other elements above it), hide it with JavaScript, or any number of such techniques.

rezamoaiandin 11y ago
I believe Google is moving towards graphical understanding of the text as well and it should be able to render the pages and see what is going on the page... those days will soon be over and technical excellency in SEO will talk.
- IgorPartola 11y ago
  What if you use custom blank fonts? Or simply detect the User Agent and serve a different CSS file?
  - leni536 11y ago
    Or detect the user agent and simply serve different content? I'm pretty sure that Google penalties this though.
    - lloyddobbler 11y ago
      Yep. Here you go: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355 Here's the full "Don't do this sh!t" article from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769#quality_guidelines https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769#quality_g...
  - nulluk 11y ago
    I think its known Google can masquerade as a "normal" visitor if it suspects you of cloaking (non identifying UA string and coming from a non disclosed google crawl IP) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en I think they also use this to notify you in webmastertools when/if your site is hacked and is doing it to avoid detection by the normal user.

ricardonunez 11y ago

Exactly. I see many comments here about hidden text, switching user agent, css and bunch of things that don't work anymore. The reason why we used to use that stuff was because Google used to read the whole page and use Keyword Density as one of the many ranking factors. Since those factors aren't used anymore and you can also get penalized, there's no reason to do it. Unless you want a page with just one picture and no text, but still get the benefit of the content, there's no reason to do it.