10.5. Hidden Content

Sometimes publishers produce great content and then for one reason or another fail to expose that content to search engines. In Section 6.9 in Chapter 6, we discussed ways that you can hide content from the search engines when you want to. However, at times this is done unintentionally. Valuable content can be inadvertently hidden from the search engines, and occasionally, the engines can find hidden content and construe it as spam, whether that was your intent or not.

10.5.1. Identifying Content That Engines Don’t See

How do you determine when this is happening? Sometimes the situation is readily apparent; for example, if you have a site that receives high traffic volume and then your developer accidentally NoIndexes every page on the site; you will begin to see a catastrophic drop in traffic. Most likely it will set off a panic investigation, leading to the NoIndex issue as the culprit.