Hidden Website Content

A fairly common way to display large chunks of content on a website is to use tabs, accordions and toggles. All of these “hide” content until they are clicked or otherwise activated, revealing the content underneath.

So how does Google index this content, or even DOES it index this content?

Why Would You Hide Content on a Website?

• Too much content
• Want a call to action from the visitor/reader
• Not something everyone who visits the page needs to see

Does Google Read It If It’s Hidden?

One side says that if you have hidden content, Google doesn’t care and it indexes it just like “normal” content. The other side says if it’s not visible, Google will NOT index it, thereby not including it in searchable content.

I am in the camp of it WILL be indexed and searchable. It’s HTML, code, content on the page, so Google will index it. Search engines read popups, meta data, alt tags, etc, so why not content that is technically on the page?

Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts is a former Google employee as part of the search quality team on search engine optimization issues and also the former head of the web spam team at Google. Her’e’s what he has to say about hidden content.

The main point of Matt’s video is make sure the content being hidden is meaningful or relevant to the page’s main content. Otherwise it could be taken as keyword stuffing.

John Mueller

John Mueller is the host of Google Webmaster Central and a Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google. He backs up what Matt said earlier.

These two experts back up my contention that hidden content on the page will be indexed as long as it’s good content… just like everything else on a web page.

Tabs, toggles and other forms of displaying layered content is common now, so everyone knows how to use them. Use these tools wisely and you won’t have any trouble getting found on the search engines.