Is there a problem if I use display:none; for big chunks of content

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1

Hi

I am creating a tumblr theme to use as a personal blog (if it expands in the future I would turn tu wordpress)

Now the problem is all the posts appear in the homepage, however I want to split them up: I want to have a page called “showcase” where it would show all the posts that have a tag of “showcase” - i did this. However, the problem is that this posts also apear in the home page (with all the other pages) - the only way to solve this (the only way I know) is by using display:none). For example

<article class="tag1 tag2 tag3"></article>
<article class="tag1 tag2 tag3"></article>
<article class="tag1 tag2 tag3"></article>
<article class="tag1 showcase tag3"></article>

.showcase{
      display:none;
              }

I read somewhere (time ago) that google would not like that. I read this long time a go that I don’t know if I am right or wrong. I want to ask if this is true, is this big problem? or is it something that is not recomended but not a big problem?
If there is a danger of google removing me from their search engines then I would not hide the posts.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

2

Hi,

Im not sure how to achieve what you need, but I’ve also read that 'Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy ’
which could potentially result in a site being removed from the Google index, and from search results

I read about this on the Google webmaster tools forum.

Hope you are able to find a resolution.

3

thanks, that’s what I needed.

what if I do it with jquery, something link $(“.showcase”).remove(); - I might have forgotten the real code by I know that jquery allows you to completely remove divs from the dom, but this only happens after the html is loaded. is this the same as display:none?
Thanks

4

Display: none is CSS, so is not removed from the DOM. However, many user agents will act as though it isn’t in the DOM by not rendering it (painting it) at all. This is why display: none can and does hide content from screen readers (and not from googlebots, who don’t paint anything).

Using Javascript, means the content is removed from the rendered DOM (the original DOM of course still has it), and will only cause user agents who can run scripts to no paint those elements. Googlebots don’t run scripts, so they will see the content.

So if you would get penalised for something like this, neither of the solutions would prevent that.

These solutions are a bit like, the house is filled with garbage, so let’s paint over the garbage so it looks like a clean room.

You will need to figure out how to take the content out of the front page… from the server’s end. That is, so the server hosting your page doesn’t place the content on the home page in the first place.

I have never used tumblr (I can usually never even get the site to work, it’s always down?) so I have no idea HOW you would do this.

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