CSS Hiding Text - Does this matter to search engine crawlers

[Blenny]

Hello,

I'm working on a site and a developer is using CSS to mask crawlable links below. Then, java, advanced search links go on top of this. So, if you disable Java, but have CSS enabled, you don't have a lefthand nav. With both CSS and Java disabled you have a fully crawlable website.

Is this a red flag? I understand a user without java would have a problem since most people don't disable CSS. But, is this a problem for search crawlers?

Thanks!

[Catalyste]

It is, you must serve the same content to user then you do to bots.

[Blenny]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. This is what I thought..,.so you're saying that Google can access/activate the CSS files? I think our developer assumes that Google doesn't activate the styles, so the links underneath would be fine. Thanks!

[john4math]

Google can index and render both CSS and JavaScript, and has an uncanny ability to sort out bad intentions, so if you're trying to mask links with these, Google will (eventually) figure it out.  Your developer's assumption is wrong.  Google has come a long with with this, and can even index some AJAX content (when JavaScript loads additional content to a page from the server).

Lots of navigation use accordions and other widgets that will display or hide navigation links depending on the page state.  That's fine.  Just don't go out of your way to hide links.