Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Will Google Penalize Content put in a Div with a Scrollbar?
-
I noticed Moosejaw was adding quite a bit of content to the bottom of category pages via a div tag that makes use of a scroll bar. Could a site be penalized by Google for this technique?
Example: http://www.moosejaw.com/moosejaw/shop/search_Patagonia-Clothing____
-
I see this question has been answered years back from now. But what's the importance of this issue in today's world.
I just got a client's website and he want to add SEO optimized content in the scroll bar at the bottom of the page. I don't know if that's a spam or not. Can you please suggest me.
I'm eager to get a proper answer.
website is: www (dot) zdhsales (dot) com
-
I've actually wondered the same before. To the best of my knowledge I've never heard anyone cite overflow: auto; as a negative signal compared to the amount of press display: none; text-indent: -9999px; etc. gets. It very well could be abused just as badly though. The only way I could think of an abuse-check would be to weigh the amount of text in the corresponding div against what a practical min-height of that div should be, but that seems a bit excessive.
I agree with Steven, it's come to a point where these css techniques have very legitimate uses and probably shouldn't be penalized. Plus, there's plenty of other ways to accomplish the same thing, whether it's document tree manipulation or any other kind of rendering of a page after the crawable URL has been loaded. So at what point is it worth fighting such a thing?
edit: on a side note, what's the deal with those crazy underscores at the end of the URL? yuck.
-
Do Google actually still penalised Overflow:Hidden and Display:none though still, or just off screen placement such as left:-9999px? If they do its something that I'm sure will be changed as its commonly used for "div switching" through navigational menu's and tabs (for display:none at least).
-
Thank you for the response Ryan. Although the site is not outwardly "hiding" the copy, from a usability standpoint this method does not seem to carry much if any value to the person visiting the page. I figured Google would see this as a lame attempt at search engine bate and frown upon the practice.
-
To the best of my knowledge this has no impact on SEO. Googlebot doesn't like it when you hide content, but that only applies to overflow:hidden and display:none as far as I know.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
Does google sandbox aged domains too?
Hello, i have a question. Recently i bought a domain from godaddy auction which is 23 years old and have DA 37 PA 34 Before bidding i check out the domain on google using this query to make sure if pages of this website are showing or not (site:mydomain.com) only home page was indexed on google. Further i check the domain on archive web the domain was last active in 2015. And then it parked for long about 4 years. So now my question does google consider these type of domain as new or will sandboxed them if i try to rebuild them and rank for other niche keywords ? Because its been 4 weeks i have been building links to my domain send several profile and social signals to my domain. My post is indexed on google but not showing in any google serp result.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Steven231 -
I'm changing title tags and meta tags, url, will i loose my ranking?
Hi Guys QUESTION: I'm currently going through a re-design for my new website that was published in November 2014 - since launching we found there were many things we needed to change, our pages were content thin being one of the biggest. I had industry experts that came in and made comments on the title tags lacking relevance for eg: our title tag for our home page is currently "Psychic Advice" most ideal customers don't search "Psychic Advice" they search more like "Online Psychic Reading" or Psychic Readings" I noticed alot of my competitors also were using title tags such as Online Psychic Readings, Free Psychic Readings etc so it brings me to my question of "changing the title tags around. The issue is, im ranking for two keywords in my industry, online psychics and online psychic readings in NZ. 1. Our home page and category pages are content thin.... so hoping that adding the changes will create perhaps some consistency also with the added unique and quality content. Here is the current website: zenory. co.nz and the new one is www.ew-zenory.herokuapp.com which is currently in development I have 3 top level domains com,com.au, and co.nz Is there anyone that can give me an idea if I were to change my home page title tag to **ZENORY | Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Phone and Chat ** If this will push my rankings down though this page will have alot more valuable content etc? For obvious reasons im going to guess it will make drop, I'm wondering though if it is worth changing the title tags and meta descriptions around or leaving it as is if its already doing well? How much of a difference do title tags and meta descriptions really make? Any insight into this would be great! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may1 -
Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL
I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
How does Google determine if a link is paid or not?
We are currently doing some outreach to bloggers to review our products and provide us with backlinks (preferably followed). The bloggers get to keep the products (usually about $30 worth). According to Google's link schemes, this is a no-no. But my question is, how would Google ever know if the blogger was paid or given freebies for their content? This is the "best" article I could find related to the subject: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332787/Matt-Cutts-Shares-4-Ways-Google-Evaluates-Paid-Links The article tells us what qualifies as a paid link, but it doesn't tell us how Google identifies if links were paid or not. It also says that "loans" or okay, but "gifts" are not. How would Google know the difference? For all Google knows (maybe everything?), the blogger returned the products to us after reviewing them. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Maybe Google watches over terms like, "this is a sponsored post" or "materials provided by 'x'". Even so, I hope that wouldn't be enough to warrant a penalty.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper0 -
Does Google crawl and index dynamic pages?
I've linked a category page(static) to my homepage and linked a product page (dynamic page) to the category page. I tried to crawl my website using my homepage URL with the help of Screamingfrog while using Google Bot 2.1 as the user agent. Based on the results, it can crawl the product page which is a dynamic. Here's a sample product page which is a dynamic page(we're using product IDs instead of keyword-rich URLs for consistency):http://domain.com/AB1234567 Here's a sample category page: http://domain.com/city/area Here's my full question, does the spider result (from Screamingfrog) means Google will properly crawl and index the property pages though they are dynamic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow20130 -
Rel author and duplicate content
I have a question if a page who a im the only author, my web will duplicate content with the blog posts and the author post as they are the same. ¿what is your suggestion in that case? thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Can you set up a Google Local account under a PO Box?
I have a client that wants a Google local listing in a town he serves but does not have a physical location. Is it an issue to share an address with an existing company? Is is it better to use a P.O. Box? or is there a forwarding address company? Is this considered a black hat Local SEO tactic?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BonsaiMediaGroup0