Don't Use CSS Text Truncation with Ellipses (...) for SEO
I’ll introduce why we have a policy against using CSS to truncate text with ellipses (…
, ...
), as it may result in SEO penalties.
“Cloaking” in SEO refers to when the content displayed to search engine crawlers (programs that search engines use to browse websites and collect content) differs from the content displayed to actual users. This is one of the black hat SEO techniques that attempts to deceive search engine algorithms to artificially boost search rankings.
Examples of cloaking include:
Displaying only text to search engines while showing images or flash content to users This allows search engines to understand and properly evaluate content as text-based, while users see completely different content.
Showing keyword-stuffed pages to search engines while displaying different pages to users Search engines see pages with frequent specific keywords to boost rankings, but actual users may see unrelated content or advertisements.
Cloaking violates search engine guidelines. Search engines like Google strictly crack down on cloaking, and sites that engage in cloaking risk penalties. In the worst cases, they may be completely excluded from search results.
Legitimate SEO provides the same content to both search engines and users, improving website rankings through appropriate methods.
“Hidden Text” in SEO is a technique that stuffs specific keywords for search engines to artificially boost search rankings, and is an SEO anti-pattern that results in penalties. This technique refers to embedding text on web pages that is invisible to users but recognized by search engines.
display: none
or visibility: hidden
to prevent display on the page.position: absolute
to display text outside the screen area.Hidden text may be considered spam behavior by search engines (like Google). Using such techniques can result in the following penalties:
While hidden text might be a technique for short-term SEO effects, search engine algorithms have evolved significantly, making detection risks high in the long term. Also, since it’s content that doesn’t provide value to users, it goes against search engine guidelines. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that provide valuable content to users, so it’s important to conduct SEO through legitimate methods.
As such, hidden text is a technique that should be avoided due to the high risk of losing trust from search engines.
That’s all from the Gemba about not wanting to truncate text with CSS for SEO purposes.