Is z-indexing a black-hat trick?
-
I use z-indexing for a floating bar that scrolls vertically along the side of my page. I'm not hiding anything. Is this safe or not?
-
You're good then. It's the negative z index implementations that have issues.
-
It's completely visible. I'm just using "z-index: 1;" I'm not using a negative number. It's for a java floating box that scrolls along side the page with the user. It just makes the floating box stay on top, but it's only covering a couple pixel widths of white space behind it.
-
you say its for a floating bar that scrolls vertically. Is it hidden from a site visitor or visible? If it's a negative z index, it could be "perceived" as a problem by Google's automated system. They claim that your intent counts. Except I've never seen Google guarantee that they'll assign a human to review every single site that is flagged with potential problems. This is why you "should probably be okay if you're not using it to fool Google" but where they consistently communicate "we have a right to do what we want to do" and thus, when in doubt, consider the risk/reward to make your decisions.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google indexing is slowing down?
I have up to 20 million unique pages, and so far I've only submitted about 30k of them on my sitemap. We had a few load related errors during googles initial visits, and it thought some were duplicates, but we fixed all that. We haven't gotten a crawl related error for 2 weeks now. Google appears to be indexing fewer and fewer urls every time it visits. Any ideas why? I am not sure how to get all our pages indexed if its going to operate like this... love some help thanks! HnJaXSM.png
Technical SEO | | RyanTheMoz0 -
How long does Google/Bing take to index
Hello we have 2-3 new pages being submitted every night to google/bing via our sitemap. Two issues I am noticing. Wondering if anyone else has same issues. a) 22 URL submitted via sitemap but only 1 indexed in two weeks. there are no errors showing b) If i submit manually using "Fetch As Google" and request indexing - the page gets indexed right way but after a day it seems to be unindexed - it will show up when i search (site:domain.com) but then disappear from the results doing the same search a few days later. Is this normal or do i have a problem that needs addressing? thank you
Technical SEO | | sancarlos0 -
Website indexed but not ranking for anything
hello everyone, It seems my website http://www.scribidocampus.com/ is indexed by google but it si not ranking anywhere, even wehn i google scribidocampus. If i search any of the text on my website in " " no results come up. can someone tell me the reason?
Technical SEO | | themesh0 -
How can I get a photo album indexed by Google?
We have a lot of photos on our website. Unfortunately most of them don't seem to be indexed by Google. We run a party website. One of the things we do, is take pictures at events and put them on the site. An event page with a photo album, can have anywhere between 100 and 750 photo's. For each foto's there is a thumbnail on the page. The thumbnails are lazy loaded by showing a placeholder and loading the picture right before it comes onscreen. There is no pagination of infinite scrolling. Thumbnails don't have an alt text. Each thumbnail links to a picture page. This page only shows the base HTML structure (menu, etc), the image and a close button. The image has a src attribute with full size image, a srcset with several sizes for responsive design and an alt text. There is no real textual content on an image page. (Note that when a user clicks on the thumbnail, the large image is loaded using JavaScript and we mimic the page change. I think it doesn't matter, but am unsure.) I'd like that full size images should be indexed by Google and found with Google image search. Thumbnails should not be indexed (or ignored). Unfortunately most pictures aren't found or their thumbnail is shown. Moz is giving telling me that all the picture pages are duplicate content (19,521 issues), as they are all the same with the exception of the image. The page title isn't the same but similar for all images of an album. Example: On the "A day at the park" event page, we have 136 pictures. A site search on "a day at the park" foto, only reveals two photo's of the albums. 3QolbbI.png QTQVxqY.jpg mwEG90S.jpg
Technical SEO | | jasny0 -
Not All Submitted URLs in Sitemap Get Indexed
Hey Guys, I just recognized, that of about 20% of my submitted URL's within the sitemap don't get indexed, at least when I check in the webmaster tools. There is of about 20% difference between the submitted and indexed URLs. However, as far as I can see I don't get within webmaster tools the information, which specific URLs are not indexed from the sitemap, right? Therefore I checked every single page in the sitemap manually by putting site:"URL" into google and every single page of the sitemap shows up. So in reality every page should be indexed, but why does webmaster tools shows something different? Thanks for your help on this 😉 Cheers
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Search results indexed
Hi there, is is bad practice in seo to have search results for products indexed? For example a search result of holidays to Ibiza, with lots of deals coming up? its a search query url that would be indexed, with just an image and price per product on the page, with about 10 per page? Any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
How do I eliminate indexed products?
Please help! We got clobbered by Penguin and are at risk of having to close down after 10 years. We have been trying to figure out why and believe now it might be because of duplicate content. We added 2" inserts in March (over 500): http://www.trophycentral.com/inserts1.html Even though each is a different products, SEOMOZ is saying they are considered duplicate content. Given the timing, we think this might be the cause, even though it is totally legitimate. Question - since these are now indexed and since we can't easily add content quickly, what is the best way to handle this situation? A no-index tag? Is there a way to let Google know that their algorithm is detroying legitimate businesses??
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0