Indexing hidden content

Does Google or other search engines index hidden content? For instance, on a site where page features are viewable in preloaded tabs where only one tab's content is visible at a time, would Google see all the rest of the content?

Turn of your javascript, css, and cookies then view your page. If you can see it, the search engines can see it. (In other words, yes).

Google will follow the tab links, just as a human user would. Be careful not to use "hidden content" to stuff keywords. At best it wont work - and at worst your rankings will take a serious hit or even get you banned from the SERPs.

when u view the source of any html page the same thing google can see. so it is advisable to remove any hidden text or hidden links from your page. otherwise your site may banned from google.

That's not good advice. There are lots of legitimate use for hidden content like dynamic menus and dynamic content. Hidden content is perfectly fine as long as it is not being used to manipulate the SERPs. Google will never ban you for how you do something. They will ban you for why you do something. They do want websites to deliver rich quality content. They don't want their SERPs manipulated. Doing the former is fine. Doing the latter is bad.

But what happens if google sees the hidden content and interprets as if it is to manipulate it? you might get banned!

I prefer not to use hidden content at all.

They would only interpret it to be bad if it is bad. It is a manual process and not automated as many tend to believe. Remember, there are millions of websites with dynamic hidden content and using it legitimately. Paranoia about hidden content is way overblown.

Google is not going to check manually each hidden content, there is algo through which it decide about hidden content or links, for exp: if u write text in same color as background than algo will detect that. and in this way they will ban you. it is advisable to not go for any hidden things, once u get penalized it will take much time to get out of it.

I quite agree. It is better not to have hidden content.

That's untrue. I know people would like things to be black and white and so simple but it just doesn't work that way.

They definitely use manual reviews to check for lots of things of which hidden content for manipulating the SERPs is one. They can't use an algorithm for that for obvious reasons: there are more legitimate uses for hidden content then for bad uses. If what you are saying is true then all sites with dynamic navigation bars will be banned automatically. That obviously would be a mistake and also hasn't happened. An algorithm will flag sites for review but a human being is needed to determine the purpose of the hidden text.

I agree.

You shouldn't be afraid to use perfectly acceptable code where it is appropriate to use.

The concept of being intimidated to under use any code for fear of being mislabeled or flagged by a search engine is kind of like being intimidated to stay at home for fear of being falsely arrested in public.

It just doesn't make sense if you think about it.

Sorry, even Google's algo is not that good. Why do you think that they have the reporting features in Google webmaster tools. Matt Cutts even admits himself that they are many reasons for hidden text and they still rely on spam report from webmasters



Source: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles...att-cutts.shtml

I'm just afraid that if the site is not so popular they will not bother.

Today I had orders worth $75, this orders are recurring that means monthly subscriptions. All of the orders came from customers who searched google and landed on my site.

Imagine somehow my site was banned from google (because of legit hidden content), even if took only one week for them to manually check, how much money would I lose? is it worth it?

Thanks.

Google has no idea how popular a site is. How can they? Without access to the site's stats they have no clue how much traffic or even how much sales it makes. They will investigate any site that gets reported. Lots of sites with little traffic or sales gets banned by Google for using black hat techniques. They definitely do not play favorites.