Will hidden content get you penalized by the search engines? Print E-mail
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Hiding content because of styling issues is okay, as long as the content will eventually be seen (it can be brought up by a click for instance).

Tricks like having white text on white background will definitely get you booted out of the search listings, don't even try it. There are a few clever workarounds that will work perfectly, but they are not ethical, so I don't mention them here (and they are bound to become penalized in the years to come).

And here is Google's reply on the question

 

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