display: none considered alright to use?

use of CSS display:none and search engines

[sabine]

I am bussy optimazing a website, which uses graphic's as headers. Would it be considered as spam, if I keep the graphics as they are and add h1 and h2 headers with the CSS style display: none? So that they are not visible in the browser, but readable for the spider?

Sabine

[Birdman]

>>Would it be considered as spam

Absolutely! Anything that is visible to spiders and not visible to humans is considered spam.

[sabine]

Thanks for your clear anwser.

What about the technic of hidden links. Up till now I have never used them. But in books about search engine optimazation, they are mentioned as a technic to bust your keywords and to lead to doorway pages.

[Nick_W]

>hidden links

>Anything that is visible to spiders and not visible to humans is considered spam.

Same thing applies.

The SE's take a dim view as Birdman has stated in the above. Whether we think it ok is rather besides the point.

Nick

[edited by: Nick_W at 1:58 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2003]

[globay]

"But in books about search engine optimazation, they are mentioned as a technic to bust your keywords and to lead to doorway pages."

That's the problem with books. Algos are changing so often that you should not rely on everything that's written in books. Especially old books can be outdated sometimes.

Just think that some years ago, it was useful to repeat your keyword a thousand times at the end of the page.

just my two cents
--
globay

[robjones]

I have a similar setup on one of my sites, I have a lot of the content inside divs that are set to display: none;, but I have links on the page that make the divs visible. The layout is of benefit to the user, but I was a bit worried if the search engine spiders would view the hidden divs as spam?

[sabine]

In order to keep the attractive design of the site and at the same time be found by search engines (I guess it is a dilemma for more people) I have the information that spiders scip external javascript files. Does the same apply to external stylesheets?

This is my last try to calculate the risk, before I confront my client with the fact of redesign.

[Mohamed_E]

Spiders do not currently read stylesheets.

Before you get too excited with this, remember two things:

1. Software changes, one day a new and improved spider may read all your hidden stylesheets.

2. Humans (i.e. your competitors) currently are perfectly capable of reading stylesheets and turning you in to the spam police.

[robjones]

In my case though, I'm not trying to spam, it's just the way I have the page layed out that the user can choose what content they wish to view. The hidden divs are a legitimate part of the layout so I'd dispute anyone who reported me for spam, I'm just wondering if the spiders would see style="display: none;" in the tag and penalise you, or are they sophisticated enough to see the behaviour in a link that makes the div visible?

[Oaf357]

I've done quite a bit of research on ways to improve rankings using "hidden" objects on pages. Guess what, none of them work for long. If you get in a better position because of them you probably won't be there very long.