Rel = author display issue

[waynekolenchuk]

I want to enter some products as blog posts. I don't want users to see the post info, but do want SE's to see rel="author".

I can do this by setting display to "none" in a CSS style. The post info does not appear in the browser but is still in the page source.

Will search engines be able to see the post info?

[RyanKent]

Will search engines be able to see the post info?

Yes. Search engines can read the HTML. Since the HTML code is unaffected by this change, search engines will be able to read it.

There is not a logical reason to present text in HTML then hide it in CSS unless you are trying to manipulate search results. Even if you come up with a reason, search engines will likely view this tactic as black hat and you are highly likely to be penalized. I strongly advise an alternative solution.

[waynekolenchuk]

Thanks.

Actually, manipulating search results never occurred to me, and there is a logical reason to do this: these are products entered as blog posts. I want them to appear more like product pages than blog posts, so I don't want the post info (date and author name) to appear to the user.

But I do want search engines to see it so this content can be correctly attributed via rel="author". That is the only intent here.

There are no keywords involved in the post info and I really don't see how this could be considered spamming.

[RyanKent]

Can you please clarify exactly what you mean by "post info". What information is being hidden via CSS?

[waynekolenchuk]

In a blog, post info is date and author name. It also includes the rel="author" tag which correctly attributes this content to the user.