CSS and SEO - is hiding text with style sheets dangerous??

[c-low]

Does anybody know if it's considered illegal, frowned upon, considered spam etc. to use CSS (cascading style sheets) to alter the display of text on a web page so that the end user does not see it? and if so, to what extent?

I'm worried about using a technique to replace <h1> text with an image of the same text by applying a background image and moving the <h1> text itself way offscreen.
The example is at bill cooper's site
"About Bill Cooper" is the background image of an <h1> tag but
the text itself is not visible because it is positioned offscreen.

HTML:

<div id="entryTitle">
   <h1>About Bill Cooper MSW, LICSW</h1>
</div>

CSS:

#entryTitle h1 {position:absolute; left:-1600px;}
#entryTitle {background:url(images/aboutBillCooper.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
 height:45px; width:300px; padding:0;}

The content in this example is obviously not being misrepresented, but i worry that the absolute positioning offscreen might set off an alarm for an indexing robot.
theoreticaly you could use this technique to hide spamy text.

Other ways I can think of one might use CSS to hide text:

• font-size:0em;
• display:none;
• text color to match background color

[Web Gazelle]

It is a fairly new blackhat technique. Slightly more advanced than good old white text on white background.

[bcombs]

I seem to remember a comment from Cutts that suggested they were looking for such things. Feel free to take that with a grain of salt, but there is absolutely no technical reason that Google couldn't look inside a CSS file.

Net-net: I wouldn't recommend it.

[kaboomadvertising]

For example, the CSS image replacement technique is a valid one and has been around for quite some time. One of the main reasons it came into existence was for accessibility purposes. If a blind person was surfing the net with a screen reader, they'd still get the benefit of the text.

Another legitimate use would be if you have flash navigation but provide a div with the navigation for people who don't have the flash plugin. Your site is still accessible to everyone.

And according to Matt Cutts:

We can flag text that appears to be hidden using CSS at Google. To date we have not algorithmically removed sites for doing that. We try hard to avoid throwing babies out with bathwater.

I think it will only become an issue when people abuse it on a regular basis for nefarious means.

[maepaulino]

Originally Posted by kaboomadvertising

For example, the CSS image replacement technique is a valid one and has been around for quite some time. One of the main reasons it came into existence was for accessibility purposes. If a blind person was surfing the net with a screen reader, they'd still get the benefit of the text.

Another legitimate use would be if you have flash navigation but provide a div with the navigation for people who don't have the flash plugin. Your site is still accessible to everyone.

And according to Matt Cutts:


I think it will only become an issue when people abuse it on a regular basis for nefarious means.

right, I use hidden texts on my personal domain, the hidden texts are jump to content/navigation and the site title so if ever some people surf with style disabled they wouldn't have a hard time going through my site...

[c-low]

Matt Cutts has a posting entitled SEO Mistakes: Unwise comments in which he recommends against using css to hide text for spammy reasons, but I can't find a follow-up to the hundreds of worried responses from designers who legitimately use css to hide text for honest reasons.

I suppose if they started flagging these types of techniques it would become pretty clear pretty fast!

[StupidScript]

The bottom line is motive.

If you are not satisfied with user-agent detection, alt text or other methods of providing alternate content for different reasons, and you want to use a CSS technique such as the one you describe for legitimate reasons, then you'll probably remain one of the 'babies' when the bathwater is indeed thrown out, and you may be okay.

If you're going to try to game the SEs by using these techniques, however, then you're going to go out the window with the water, when they decide on an algorithmic approach for doing it.

BTW ... what's the problem with user-agent detection and alt text for doing the things you say you want to do? They're simple, effective, and well-known by the SEs. Screen-readers have no problem with alt text and a div that only displays when Flash is not detected would be useful both to non-Flash users and to the spiders. Badda-bing.