CooCooCachooo
Registered Member
- Jan 14, 2020
- 70
- 8
Still viable? Or nah .
Hidden text and content cloaking
- Thread starter CooCooCachooo
- Start date
CooCooCachooo
Registered Member
- Jan 14, 2020
- 70
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If you don't know what I mean this thread isn't for you 
CooCooCachooo
Registered Member
- Jan 14, 2020
- 70
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Someone knows
CooCooCachooo
Registered Member
- Jan 14, 2020
- 70
- 8
Thank you for your reply;
Well yes Google has run a strong anti-blackhat campaign to scare people. But there are levels and limits to everything. Surely a few hidden links are still common practice.
I'm just trying to get a gauge
Well yes Google has run a strong anti-blackhat campaign to scare people. But there are levels and limits to everything. Surely a few hidden links are still common practice.
I'm just trying to get a gauge
Preon
Senior Member
- Apr 6, 2016
- 992
- 1,724
So, there are plenty of membership forums that show a different page to the google bot compared to users. Google bot is allowed to crawl and index the whole forum, users are allowed to view a single article and then prompted to register or pay to view more.
CooCooCachooo
Registered Member
- Jan 14, 2020
- 70
- 8
This must be a sensitive topic. Bump for relevant answers that aren't bots.
CooCooCachooo
Registered Member
- Jan 14, 2020
- 70
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Great pic btw
- Jun 20, 2013
- 11,507
- 8,915
Yup, But it's more like shooting an arrow in dark. Not going to work with the regular sites, but with auto blogs, sometimes.
- Sep 10, 2010
- 11,807
- 26,658
It depends, but it is frowned upon by many.
I personally think it's useful for some genuine cases. For example, look into how the forum software "discourse" renders it's content. It renders normal page content if script is not enabled, and generates content by ajax; when it is enabled. Can this be categorised as content cloacking? Not sure, but technically it should be the same.
As for hidden content, consider tabs for example. The active tab is shown to the user, while the others are hidden. Same for slideshows as well. Does any site which has tabs/slideshows get some kind of algo penalty? I have not heard about such incedences yet.
Something similar happens for links as well by the way. How about hamburger menu? All the links are initially hidden, visually. When you click the icon, it gets visible. By theory, any site which uses such menus should be penalised lol (I haven't heard anything like that either).
P.S., I am not a seo guru, but rather a developer. Take my suggestions with a few grains of salt.
I personally think it's useful for some genuine cases. For example, look into how the forum software "discourse" renders it's content. It renders normal page content if script is not enabled, and generates content by ajax; when it is enabled. Can this be categorised as content cloacking? Not sure, but technically it should be the same.
As for hidden content, consider tabs for example. The active tab is shown to the user, while the others are hidden. Same for slideshows as well. Does any site which has tabs/slideshows get some kind of algo penalty? I have not heard about such incedences yet.
Something similar happens for links as well by the way. How about hamburger menu? All the links are initially hidden, visually. When you click the icon, it gets visible. By theory, any site which uses such menus should be penalised lol (I haven't heard anything like that either).
P.S., I am not a seo guru, but rather a developer. Take my suggestions with a few grains of salt.
- May 8, 2012
- 4,217
- 3,728
what? sure it works with regular sites, like i said you just have to know what you are doing. it works with any type of website, there are many tricks to hide content from users and only show it to bots.
there is even some forum software that uses hidden content to "cloak" their copyright backlinks from users so they arent visible on the site, but get picked up by bots and it works since years for them.