← Back to assessments

VC006 – Hidden Content Audit

Overview

Detects hidden content that may be used for keyword stuffing or cloaking: elements with display:none/visibility:hidden or "hidden" in class, then classified as suspicious vs legitimate.

Probability that AI systems use this signal: Crawlers and generative AI pipelines consume structured and visible page signals for training and inference. Assessment-specific signals (e.g. schema, canonicals, trust cues) affect how likely a page is indexed and surfaced. The probability that this assessment's signal influences AI behavior is high when the page is in a product or compliance context.

Impact on geo compliance: Passing this assessment supports geo compliance by ensuring machine-readable and visible content meet standards that reduce the risk of wrong locale, pricing, or trust in AI-generated answers. Failing can lead to non-compliant or misleading surfacing.

What We Check

  • **Hidden elements:** any element with inline style "display: none" or "visibility: hidden"; elements with class containing "hidden" that have text content.
  • **Legitimate skip:** tag in [script, style, meta, link, title]; input/textarea type=hidden.
  • **Suspicious:** has text content and (1) text contains one of: seo, keyword, spam, hidden, invisible, meta, description, title, tag; or (2) text length > 100; or (3) hidden via "hidden" class (always suspicious if has text).
  • **Penalty:** −20 per suspicious hidden element; first 3 get issue line "Hidden text: '...'".

Pass / Fail and Score

  • **PASSED** if score >= 60. Details: total hidden, suspicious count, legitimate count.

How to Fix When It Fails

  • Review hidden content for SEO compliance; remove or refactor suspicious hidden text.

Common Issues

  • Hidden divs/spans with keywords, long text, or "hidden" class used for content.

Dependencies

None.

How to Verify

  • Search HTML for display:none, visibility:hidden, class*="hidden" and inspect text content.

Additional Resources

  • Google cloaking: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#cloaking