Click to Expand Content - Does anyone know if Google discounts this as a ranking signal ?

[PeteC12]

Hi All,

I read an interesting answer from Tom Roberts on another question and one of things he mentioned was that there are conflicting reports about "Click to Expand " Content being discounted with a link to the article  - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html

My eCommerce uses this method on every landing page and tabs on our products pages so I am wondering if others had first hand knowledge of whether using these methods had affected their sites or not ?.

I may try to experiment on a few pages to remove this and show all content at the bottom but it does kinda ruin the pages a bit so I wanted to know what peoples thoughts were before I screw up my pages and think about page redesign etc etc.

Also , if I was to try it ,then how long should I experiment for ?. would a couple of weeks be sufficient providing google crawls them regually

thanks

Pete

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I have used tabs before and after this news and I didn't see any reprecussions for using tabs, but that doesn't mean much. I would definitely suggest testing on your site. You can take a look at parameters in Webmaster Tools if they populate with these tabs:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080550?hl=en

If you are able to place content without tabs, I would definitely suggest trying it. Studies are showing that SERPs like longer content anyway:

http://moz.com/blog/searchmetrics-ranking-factors-2014

Just be mindful that the content needs to be relevant to the main topic or product and needs to serve a purpose. Content for the sake of content doesn't do much good. But again, try it out on a couple of pages and watch KPIs and rankings for those pages for a couple of weeks.

i would love to hear other Mozzer's thoughts on this as well!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[TomRayner]

Hi Pete

Sorry that I missed your comment before.

I can absolutely understand why there would be a sense of frustration for designers and webmasters here.  First of all, as Patrick alludes, it is not exactly clear whether or not this is being accounted for (results and feedback are inconsistent, to the point where I can't see a pattern in industries/niches etc).  And secondly, Google has always been about making the page as friendly for the user as possible.  Using expandable content/internal anchors can do just that, so it's a frustrating contradiction.

My advice would be what Patrick has said and that's to test.  I'd give it 6-8 weeks to try and see any substantial change.

[94501]

I kind of think of text in expandable tabs like could be useful to someone, but not the majority of people.

Tom is right that it could be a better user experience. But what does it say about the text... not really super important for most people. That's a little like way way down the page.

Have you searched for your text in tabs to see if it's indexed? I did that not long ago and found that mine wasn't and since moving it out of expandable tabs it now is.

It's possible it was not the only thing going on, but it would be interesting to check.

[PeteC12]

Many thanks all. I will look at those articles and give it a go and see what happens.

Pete