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Im working with jquery ui on many of my websites and I am concerned that any content that is in hidden divs that will be used for a dialog is not search engine friendly and I would like to find out if:

Is content in hidden divs searched/indexed by google?

What is the best practice for using jQuery UI dialogs/tabs or other hidden elements on a webpage? (to ensure the best results for SEO)

Kieran Andrews
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  • Id really like some definite answers, not maybes (links would be great). Most of my google searches came up with pages from 2005. – Kieran Andrews Nov 04 '10 at 23:45
  • This actually answers that question best, it's a short video from google.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpK1VGJN4XY     – Gord Jun 30 '12 at 16:43
  • @AndrewBarber (who closed the question) - seems like a straightforward question to me. Whether it is a good fit for StackOverflow could be debated, but that's not the reason you gave when closing it. A good answer would link to a quote from an authoritative Google page (as the accepted answer does) or interview. And if there is a specific technique that works well, include **code** that matches what the Google source says. (**code** might make it appropriate here.) Of course, if Google changes policy, any answer may become incorrect. But that could be fixed by an edit at that time. – ToolmakerSteve Aug 11 '14 at 23:01
  • Why is this not a real question? I think it's a very good question – Richard de Ree Feb 05 '18 at 12:33

3 Answers3

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This is the guidance that google provides.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Hidden content is also mentioned here:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66353

Remember the spiders don't execute your js

Dennis Burton
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Yes it's indexed, crawlers don't care about CSS and JavaScipt for the most part (anything between the <body> and </body> is fair game. Turn off JavaScript...that's closer to what the crawler sees.

That being said, yes the crawler sees the content, but it'll also actively ignore it as much as possible...and penalize your rankings if you try and fool it with content in hidden divs just for pagerank purposes.

Community
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Nick Craver
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Yes, Google can read hidden div, but make sure that you do not stuff with keywords. It is not a good choice for accessibility purposes as well, because most of the screen readers today are ignoring hidden divs. Plan your content accordingly.

More Info from Google

Rohit Reddy
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