Hidden divs on screen, but they print out.

Does Google now penalise?

[simonuk]

I have created a number of web sites with a hidden div which doesn't show on the html page but does when it's printed.

I've noticed these sites have started dropping on google and wondered if Google is now seeing hidden divs?

[g1smd]

They probably take things like that into account.

It's a high risk strategy to do it like that now.

[pageoneresults]

What's in the hidden div? And, is it hidden or set to display:none?

[Asia_Expat]

Here is a line from my pages...

<a class="nav" href="http://www.example.com/forum/">Forum</a><span class="hide"> ¦ </span>

... the hidden character just makes the print page look better I guess. Is that likely to cause a penalty?

[pageoneresults]

Is that likely to cause a penalty?

No. But just for safety's sake, I'd change the class name to something other than "hide". ;)

All that code just to hide a vertical pipe character? Nah, leave it there, they don't look that bad when printing, do they?

[Asia_Expat]

I know... why don't I just remove them altogether :)

[londrum]

you could do something like this as well... assuming that you have some kind of wrapper around your links...

<div id="navigation">
<a href="http://www.example.com/forum/">Forum</a> ¦ 
</div>

in the css

#navigation {color:#fff}

(...or whatever the background-color is)

#navigation a {background:#fff;color:#f00}

(...whatever colour you want them to be)

that way the pipe will disappear, but the links won't. search engines shouldn't penalise that because the links aren't hidden.

[Robert Charlton]

Why not just use

   

...?

[Asia_Expat]

I just finished removing them altogether.
Everything looks the same and 'm not worried anymore :)

[londrum]

i know you're already done it and you're happy with it now, which is cool... but i've just remembered one more thing you could do. and it won't involve changing your HTML either.
you could try using that :after selector in the CSS
so

a:after { content:" ¦ " }