Hidden text on page

[burhankhan]

Hi:

I came to know that hidden text on web page can be easily detected by Spiders. My Question is "What means hidden text?"

Is small text with the same color as page background?
Is text included in comments tage?
Is text included in menu?

I am afraid because i have a span menu, wich display: none, and when user click on it it will show it, using display: inline. Is it also consider in hidden text?

Just like i see in (right side menu, when click on it , it will expand menu)

From
Burhan

[Andy AtkinsKruger]

It's an interesting point. We often talk about 'hidden' text - but in reality there is no such thing. I think the best definition we could give is:-

"If you deliberately use techniques to hide text from the user - but display it to search engines, then it is likely it has been abused before by someone and will therefore no longer be well regarded".

So, same colour text as background is definitely a no no.

Very small text is going to count for little.

Noscript tags (which hide the text in a tag and only display it when the user's browser will not view scripts) do get indexed, can it seems help with rankings - but have much less 'value' than normal text.

Javascript switches, could be argued hide stuff - and they've were dealt with only in the last few months and another no no.

A comments tag is a tag which says "Ignore me" - so that isn't going to help.

As far as your menu is concerned, it seems to me that you are not hiding that from a user.

What I'd suggest you do is two things:-

1. To check if text is indexed - search for a string of text that is very unusual in your site and includes the text you have in your navigation bar within quotation marks "" and see if Google has it.

2. Do a Google site:www.yourdomain.com and find a typical page that carries the navigation (look for your home page first), click on the 'cache' word in the results list, then when the cache is displayed click on 'Cached text' and what you will then is what Google has captured from your site.

This does not necessarily mean that they will give it a value in terms of rankings - but at least you know its in there and can then later do other tests!