SEO and display:hidden
 

So, I see Dirty F is on the role, so I thought I'd chip in to ask for the worthy 2c of the seo gfy gurus....

css display:hidden - a no go for seo or ok?

web2 uses it a shit lot and doesn't seem to get penalised. Quite the opposite, it ranks high. Is the bot js savvy, so that if there is a mouseover to turn that to visible, it isn't penalised, but if it's just there for seo purposes, you get sin binned?

what's the low down, cos I'd like to use it for some "related videos" (6 max) to get maxium keyworditch on a video page....?

--- edit
make that css display:none
pffft - still, the Q is the same

Here's a good article on the subject.

http://searchengineland.com/is-hidin...mate-seo-13643


edit: my opinion is if Google thinks you're trying to game the system you'll get bitch slapped. If there is a legitimate browser friendly reason for doing so then you'll most likely be ok.

As resident GFY SEO guru who is well respected amongst his peers I say:

If you have a high amount of returning visitors and long visit lenght per visitor you can do whatever the fuck you like. Google does not give a toss.

and herein lies the black box (goog or not)... these are just robots indexing sites after all is said and done. Hence there has to be logic behind it, not reasoning....which is why I said if a mouseover triggers display:inline or something, logically it isn't text hidden from the user etc, which is why web2 sites get away with it....

just wanted to know, but of course the fickle gfy se people will keep cards close to their chest pffffft.

--edit
don't take that personally... I do appreciate the link. I know shit about seo, (nor do I care!), but that's useful for me

I am waiting for the day for some video game moron junky, who thinks real life and Counter Strike are one in the same to snipe you. :2 cents:

Suck my penis.

:1orglaugh

Not at all, there's no magic solutions out there and only Google knows how it's algorithms work, the best clues come from the Google webmaster guidelines and their regular statements through their videos and the musings of people like Matt Cutts.

To know anything more than that you have to do your own testing and whenever I talk about SEO matters I can only speak from personal experience and what works for me may not work for someone else, there are just too many variables.

I think, as always, the focus should be on quality and the end user. If you're focused on that then Google should look favorably upon you.

Most everything comes down to how you implement things. If you're doing things that Google sees as improving user experience then you'll almost always be ok. However people use some of these techniques to try to game the search engines and Google particularly has been putting alot of work into detecting things which take away from quality and user experience.

and that's the crux :thumbsup
I want(ed) to display 6 related videos cos I have a great algo to display related matter, but on titles, it's not apparent why it;s related, but on the description (esp. with highlighting), it's clearly visible why it's related. But of course, the description is long, so only mouseover events work visually..... whether the se's penalise it or not, is all in the testing...

I don't think it makes much of a difference if you use it sparingly, but if you're concerned, how about sticking display:none in your .css file and disallowing .css with robots.txt?