Do you think using accordion text can hurt SEO?

[DTOSI]

I have a lot of text for my home page. My plan is to a J Query Plugin for accordion text. Does anyone think that this can hurt SEO efforts?

[EGOL]

If you google any of the text on this FAQ page you will see that google has it indexed.

http://irbigbreak.com/faq/

[William.Lau]

The accordion type text are most likely indexed by Google and does not affect SEO.

The spiders don't really view pages like humans, and you can actually use Webmaster Tools to see what the spider sees(if that makes sense).

But you can also check View Source to see what is on the page, and if it shows the text it is most likely indexed and searchable by Google.

Hope that helped.

[EvolveCreative]

We use accordions all of the time and it always gets indexed. Make sure to check that it's not stuck in some sort of JavaScript and you'll be fine.

[DTOSI]

Thanks guys

[Sandicliffe]

Hi Janice,

I have also been wondering the same thing. Although the above replies may have been relevant in 2012, now things seem to have changed. Being from a design background accordions and tabs have always been useful for both visuals and UX, but after reading Barry Schwartz’s article my outlook has changed and a work-around is required.

To conclude the above article, Google are stating hidden content is deemed as unimportant to the user so is 'discounted' and this is something that has been done for a while. If you want your content to have a positive impact on your page ranking it's better left visible unless it's something like FAQ and/or you're not interested in optimising the content on that page. Other members of Moz may have more information on this than me.

Thanks

[EGOL]

Google the hidden text.

[Sandicliffe]

Thanks for the clarification EGOL, very useful!

For other users, here's the link to hidden text EGOL is talking about.