CSS Negative Text Indent Property: Looks Spammy and Bad for SEO

Negative text indents have been a debated topic in the web design world for some time. But why? Should they be used or not? Since Google chimed in to the debate, there’s been even more discussion swirling in the blogosphere. Let’s take a look at why this method of using CSS to hide text off-page ever came to be and why experts say you shouldn’t use a negative value to hide text off-page.

Where This Trick is Used Honestly

There are several reasons why web designers use a negative text-indent property to hide text off page. These reasons are used without malicious indent and some feel that Google and the search engines may just brush this off.

• Navigational Buttons
• The Ol’ Image Replacement Trick
• Alternate to display: none;
• Ease of Use

The Not So Honest Reason

Years ago when keyword density used to be the way to the top of the search engines, spammers would hide hundreds/thousands of keywords and links off-page to seemingly trick search engines into thinking their content was the most relevant to the searches pertaining to the hidden keywords. For a little while this worked and some sites saw great success in the search engines thus leading to the increased popularity of this spam technique.

Google Fights Back

All search engines hate spam sites. Google has lead the way with their top-secret algorithm at effectively removing these sites from their indexes. How they have done this, by effectively evaluating the integrity of your website through your code, content, reputation and lifespan… plus many other factors that many are still trying to uncover.

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors -Google

What is certain is that there are various penalizations are incorporated in Google, Yahoo, Bing algorithms for websites that hide large amounts of text off page. Most likely this penalty depends on how much text you are hiding off page and whether you are trying to deceive the search engines and impact user experience. Google will only promote the sites they see best fit to fulfill the users need. If you are trying to be shady and trick the users by throwing a link in every other sentence that is only 2px by 2px and looks like a period, Google will find out. And so will Yahoo, Bing and others… (most likely). This is because it is written in their algorithm thanks to the spammy malicious sites created years ago that Google had to learn to trim for their search results.

Don’t Try to Play Pranks on the Search Engines

You have to remember that the text-indent property is just CSS styling. Google will still see the text that is hidden off page, whether or not they can read your CSS and JavaScript is up for speculation. As best practice, stray away from hiding text off page.

Does it Impact SEO?

While it may impact your website’s SEO only slightly if you hide minor text off-page, it’s not a good idea to use hidden text and links. Google has recommended not using this method to hide logo text, headers, and other tricks thus we must comply to make the almighty happy.

No More of This

h1 a {
  background: url(logo.png) no-repeat left top;
  text-indent: -9999px; /* bad idea */
}

Other Blogs on This Same Topic:

This is not an old topic, the blogosphere is still actively discussing this topic. Current and past employees of Google as well as other respectable SEO gurus have talked about why not to using CSS to hide text off-page. Here’s a few below that should give you a nice idea about the discussion.

1. Webmaster Radio Office Hours with Google Senior Developer Programs Engineer Maile Ohye
2. CSS Tricks Forum: Text-Indent: -9999px; = bad SEO?
3. Stop Using the text-indent:-9999px; CSS Trick by Luigi Montanez

Have You Been Penalized?

If you feel that you have been penalized by Google because you are not getting indexed or you are performing more poorly than you did in the past you can submit your site for reconsideration. Google will reconsider your site and most likely, if you have complied with their terms you can be included in the cool-club of search engine visibility. Ah, it feels good to be indexed.

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