Can legitimate text hiding get you in trouble with Google?

[1script]

Hi all, I have forum sites where a bunch of text that is quoted from previous message in the thread is initially hidden via CSS display:none . There is a button that a human with a JS-enabled browser can click to un-hide the text if they were curious what's being quoted. I use it solely for visitors' convenience because most of those quotes are not properly formatted and many are simply repeats of the previous message.

Can anyone see that as a problem and maybe even reason enough for Google the penalize the site? I have a number of sites that lost most of their G* traffic lately and, although not all use this feature, many of those penalized do.

Am I just being paranoid about this or you think this merits removal of the feature and a recon request filing?

[tedster]

A show/hide div script cannot get you in trouble. As long as a legitimate user action makes the text visible there is no problem. If there were, then every site with a "hover menu" would be in trouble, too!

[1script]

Thanks, tedster!

Well, my line of thinking was that the amount of text I have initially hidden is so much more than an average "hover menu" would have. In some instances it might be 1/3rd of all the (non-template) text on the page.

I guess, I'm just looking for any reason to send that recon request :) It would look silly to not put anything in there and just say:"Dear Google, I have no idea what's happening but can you pretty please take another look at my site?" :)

Cheers!

[tedster]

I have a friend who has been selling products (for 7 years) with LOTS of information related to each item. So he breaks the information into 8 buckets - a quick Sales Pitch that is always visible plus 7 hidden divs with links to make the extra information divs visible, but just one at a time. The total text on the page can be 3,000 to 4,000 words, and sometimes even more. But the sales pitch is always under 500 words.

Never a problem with Google. We did create a script to make the appropriate hidden div visible to a visitor from a search engine whose query includes text that isn't visible in the Sales Pitch div. But that was done to retain those visitors, not to make Google happy. I don't think it matters to Google - lots of sites hide and expand things like user comments behind this kind of script.

[tedster]

I guess, I'm just looking for any reason to send that recon request :) It would look silly to not put anything in there and just say:"Dear Google, I have no idea what's happening but can you pretty please take another look at my site?" :)

I feel your pain. As I mentioned in the Reconsideration Request Tips [webmasterworld.com] you can always take it to Google's Webmaster Help forums - as long as you are willing to post your domain for public inspection.

Poke around on that forum and you will see that a lot of the time sites with "collateral damage" from a filter end up learning about something that actually IS wrong. And in some cases, I have seen the Google reps comment that there was a Google error and then Google does fix it.

Of course, posting there does take a certain kind of "grit".

[internetheaven]

It would look silly to not put anything in there and just say:"Dear Google, I have no idea what's happening but can you pretty please take another look at my site?" :)

I've had to do that twice now! Didn't seem to affect either case.

It really sucks that they won't tell you the reasons for penalties. You end up pouring through your own code, checking backlinks, checking caches for days on end for possibly no good reason.

They apparently only discuss errors with important websites ... :(