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SEO hidden text and AJAX

(devx.lt)
81 points Bogdanas | 4 comments | 30 Jul 15 12:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.26s | source
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donmb ◴[30 Jul 15 13:47 UTC] No.9974901[source]▶
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.
replies(2): >>9975125 #>>9975878 #
IgorPartola ◴[30 Jul 15 14:21 UTC] No.9975125[source]▶
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.
replies(1): >>9975155 #
rezamoaiandin ◴[30 Jul 15 14:26 UTC] No.9975155[source]▶
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.
replies(1): >>9975227 #
1. IgorPartola ◴[30 Jul 15 14:36 UTC] No.9975227[source]▶
What if you use custom blank fonts? Or simply detect the User Agent and serve a different CSS file?
replies(2): >>9975349 #>>9975465 #
2. leni536 ◴[30 Jul 15 14:52 UTC] No.9975349[source]▶
Or detect the user agent and simply serve different content? I'm pretty sure that Google penalties this though.
replies(1): >>9976330 #
3. nulluk ◴[30 Jul 15 15:07 UTC] No.9975465[source]▶
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

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.

4. lloyddobbler ◴[30 Jul 15 17:02 UTC] No.9976330[source]▶
Yep. Here you go: 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_g...