Google no longer indexing content in onLoad hidden sections?

[CaptainSalad2]

It seems google are no longer indexing any content in my “read more” panels that are hidden during the “onLoad” event.

Shame because this is a user friendly way to display content and prevent unnecessary scrolling if the user isn’t interested in certain sections of a page.

On my hobby site I have client profiles that are displayed using an accordion jquery script, about 10 sections worth of content is organised per client in this way to prevent overwhelming the client with endless scrolling. But when I cut and past any section that’s “hidden” on load it is no longer found on google!

They used to index this stuff…

[aakk9999]

To add:

I wonder how many would go and copy someone else's content that is in "expand on click/hover" and put it immediately visible on their page, in the hope they will outrank the original.

I also wonder whether this is just another reason why Google needs you to unblock your css/javascript. And knowing the above - should you, if you risk fall in ranking just because you organised your page nicely in tabs?

And another observation - John Mueller says:

That includes the tab UIs, where you have all kinds of content hidden away in tabs, those kind of things.

I do not think it is fair from Google to presume that just because you have tabs, you are doing it just to "hide the content away". Personally, I think tabs are a good way to organise the page, to make visitor straight away aware what kind of sections you have on the page. It is easier to glance and tap/click on tabs than to scroll down to see what else is there.

After all - scrolling down or clicking on tab is one click either way. And neither is visible straight away when the page opens.

The only difference is Ctrl+F search that cannot find the text on tab unless the tab is open.

[elguiri]

In the name of site speed, all my CSS, JS and image files are on a CDN.

As I don't want Google to index my images, as some of them are not original, the CDN's robots.txt excludes robots completely.

I have a "read more" link to expand to expand some text. The code for this is just a div class.

From a code point of view, the expansion just looks like any other text on the page.

I have no idea how Google will treat any of this. Having read this thread I'll be keeping a close eye on it.

[elguiri]

Just tried the Fetch and Render option in webmaster tools. Sure enough it gives me a list of all my CDN files (which are on a subdomain) under "Googlebot couldn't get all resources for this page. Here's a list: ", pointing out that it was blocked from each item.

Interestingly, a 3rd party script which is included in the head, and also excludes bots is not mentioned.

[FranticFish]

there is no bolded sentence shown in snippet since it is not directly visible when the page loads (i.e. the sentence is visible only when the expanded section opens).

Opening a page with a certain area revealed or highlighted, or the words searched for emphasised, would be a good use of search engine referral data, if webmasters were to be trusted with the query that bought a visitor to their website.

[SEOPTI]

I have 7 tabs for each URL. So they want people to scroll 7 pages down instead of clicking tabs? This is so dumb! Most people don't scroll at all, they click on tabs. It's the best solution for tablets and mobile AND for desktop.

I did extensive testing with click events and people click on the tabs all the time (more people click on tabs than scroll down the page) - if they are above the fold.

So forget what this government operated monopoly has to say. I thought they do split testing oh maybe I'm wrong? I will never do what they suggest, index or think it's right or wrong, this is the first step to destroying your site. It's your site so you decide what to do, forget them.

If you have a cat or a dog you also do what is best for the pet not because the vet says this is good or this is bad, you know the pet better than anyone else. This is the same with your site and your visitors.

[graeme_p]

I have to admit, it sounds absolutely bizarre for Google to ignore parts of the HTML text because they can detect the fact that its visibility is being toggled with Javascript that they are not allowed to crawl

It seems the right thing to do. If they cannot crawl the script they cannot know what it does. If they assumed that the JS makes the script visible it would be a gift to search engine spammers who would insert hidden text that looks as though it would be made visible by the blocked JS, but is not.

[rj87uk]

Would this effect mobile and responsive designs in any way? I do think not having a mobile friendly design effects the rankings when a user is searching using a mobile or tablet, so would this have any implications? My guess is no as almost every mobile design must use tabs and other creative ways to display the content in an easy to use way.

Again would this be mixed signals from Google in terms of usability vs ranking?

[elguiri]

Just modified my robots.txt so Google can completely index my ass-ets.

Now sit back and wait for my traffic to double. :)

[EditorialGuy]

I do think not having a mobile friendly design effects the rankings when a user is searching using a mobile or tablet

It may or may not now, but Google has said that mobile-friendliness is likely to become a ranking factor for mobile searches in the future (which makes perfect sense).

One caveat: "Mobile" and "tablets" aren't necessarily synonymous. In is Mobile Guide for developers, Google states:

"If your website has different pages to serve desktop and smartphone users and does not have tablet-specific pages, in our experience tablet users usually expect to see your desktop site rather than the site’s smartphone pages."

Source:

[developers.google.com...]

[Dymero]

I've done some testing before, and unless Google has recently had a major breakthrough in their understanding of Javascript, they can really only understand it up to a certain point.

[elguiri]

Dymero, is that testing you can share? I think that would be really interesting.