I just outranked The White House for their own content.

Demonstration of effect hidden content has on rankings. This includes tabs, accordions and other common content expansion mechanisms.

3 October 2022

A page that shows visible content by default, tends to perform better than a page that hides the content.

To prove a point, I found a prominent page on The White House website that uses hidden content.

The White House Hidden ContentPage URL: https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/join-us/ 

I copied that content and put it on Dejan Marketing home page and please note that I've read their copyright policy which states that "government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected."

Here is a screenshot from these Google results an hour later:

On reader's request, we've now switched to hidden content and have caused the drop in rank:

We'll follow up by switching between the visible and hidden content for a number is cycles to see if the gain and drop is consistent with each change.

If it's important don't hide it.

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