Google & Tabbed Content

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I wondered if anyone had a case study or more info on how Google treats content under tabs?

We have an ecommerce site & I know it is common to put product content under tabs, but will Google ignore this?

Becky

[OlegKorneitchouk]

General consensus is that it is still usually indexed/ranked but the value is diminished (and they may be going in the direction of completely ignoring it). See this post: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html

[Emerson.Scherer]

+1 to Oleg's response. Google is absolutely moving towards ignoring content that is not immediately visible.

[Gyorgy.B]

According to the updated Google webmaster guidelines (Jan 2016), tabbed or not immediately visible content will have even less value than previously.

"Make your site's important content visible by default. Google is able to crawl HTML content hidden inside navigational elements such as tabs or expanding sections, however we consider this content less accessible to users, and believe that you should make your most important information visible in the default page view."

Summary of changes here: https://www.seroundtable.com/changes-in-the-google-webmaster-guidelines-21551.html

[BeckyKey]

Brilliant thank you for your comments

[BeckyKey]

Hi

To add to this, I have been presented with a work around to this:

Hidden Text in Websites - SEO Chat instead of having hidden div's to use the z-index and absolute positioning css features to workaround this problem mostly because menus are used a lot in that way, so, search engines apparently still index these words.

"Another way to hide text from the user is to put text in the  Back or Front layer instead of the immediately visible layer. The third dimension of viewable screen is the Z-index. The first two dimensions are (X) and (Y), which indicate “left to right” and “up to down” respectively. The Z-index indicates “back to front” for layers of Web pages. Using the Z-index, Web designers can hide text in the previous layer.

These methods are also used in creating of menus or navigation bars in websites, so search engines index them.

Is this seen as a spammy work around?

[Gyorgy.B]

Your link goes to a login page. I think you meant this: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/search-engine-optimization-help/hidden-text-in-websites/

Google is most likely smart enough to know these tricks, so I wouldn't waste time by implementing various CSS layer tricks. Try to follow the webmaster guidelines as much as possible.

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

Yes I agree, does anyone have any examples of great product pages which don't use tabs?

A lot of sites do use the tabs to make it easier for customers

[OlegKorneitchouk]

amazon, zappos, walmart, microsoft store - many ecommerce sites don't use tabs.

A common workaround seems to be to have "tabbed navigation" but instead of toggling visibility, it scrolls down to the corresponding section.

[PMSEO365]

Hey guys!

So I manage a site called ProjectManager.com and we're currently redesigning our homepage. The design we're going with has a big section with content hidden behind tabs and I was initially concerned about this content being "discounted" as John Mueller said back in 2014 (http://youtu.be/tFSI4cpJX-I?t=10m55s).

I then came across the below post in SE journal that cites a tweet by Gary Ilyes saying in response to mobile content hidden for ux being discounted "no, in the mobile-first world content hidden for ux should have full weight". My question to the group would be, do you think desktop tabbed content is still discounted whereas mobile tabbed content has full weight? I actually just tweeted at Gary with the same question so will post again if I hear back.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-now-ok-put-content-behind-tabs/178020/

Also think it would be cool to update this thread with the most updated info as this page is ranking 3rd for the query "google content behind tabs".

Appreciate the help!

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Thanks for your input

I hadn't seen that article! I have a competitor doing it who seem to rank really well, despite the fact they don't have great backlinks, the only thing I can see they're doing is tabbed content. So I've tried it for a few pages and it seems to be helping.

Do you think think interaction with the tabbed content could affect how Google ranks the page? So if no one clicks on the tab, it may be ignored?

Would love to know everyone's thoughts on the mobile/desktop question you raised too

Thanks!

[Odments]

Hi,

How did the test go overall.  Did you add any more pages into the test?

Would love to get more insight into this theory.

Thanks

[BeckyKey]

Hi

It's actually worked for us on certain pages, I don't like to just throw content under a tab on the page, but for now it's helping whilst we work on the design of the pages.

I think they need improvement from a UX perspective still but for now it's helping.

Thanks!