In the HTML we have some content (legacy) which has display:none. (by inline css).
Is it desired behavior that the Swiftype crawl indexes hidden content?
Hi there,
That is the correct behavior. display:none CSS styling is specific to client rendering, but is still viewable within the markup that the Crawler sees for indexing.
If you’d like to exclude particular sections of the template from indexing you can use content inclusion/exclusion tagging:
Thank you for your reply.
The inclusion and exclusion bit is clear. The desired approach should always be to optimise the pages and not alter the SE somehow.
I think I’ve found an answer, and would like to elaborate for anyone who is running into the same question.
In short: Yes you want hidden content to be indexed
The question is more in the lines of would it be desired behavior to also index hidden content.
In our specific use-case there is some HTML stuff that is rendered for Sharepoint, but does not add value for the user. And it is some gibberish that get’s shown in the body of a search result. So the SRP get’s polluted with a lot of weird text.
But this comes down the ‘good old’ index question. Should content in hidden tabs or ‘click to expand’ sections be indexed. And there the desired behavior would be that it does index it, since there typically is relevant content for that page.
Some background info:
Hope this helps.