Do search engines index a rich snippet data from HTML which is not visible?

Do search engines index a rich snippet data from HTML which is not visible? - Google Search Console is a free application that allows you to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve any issues that Google may encounter as it crawls and attempts to index your website in search results. If you’re not the most technical person in the world, some of the errors you’re likely to encounter there may leave you scratching your head. We wanted to make it a bit easier, so we put together this handy set of tips about seo, google-search, bing, rich-snippets to guide you along the way. Read the discuss below, we share some tips to fix the issue about Do search engines index a rich snippet data from HTML which is not visible?.Problem :

I want to add some piece of data to rich snippets (for example, breadcrumps), but this information is not visible on the page (for example, because the designer has not yet prepared the sketches)

Is there a way to tell search engines to index this data?

Solution :

Google does not use rich snippet data that isn't visible on the page to users. From their help page:

In general, Google won't display any content in rich snippets that is not visible to human user. Don't hide the content that you have marked up for rich snippets using techniques like display:none, value-title, or css. Google will ignore content that isn't visible to human users, so you should mark up the text that visitors will see on your web pages.

EDIT: Google seems to have relaxed this policy somewhat. They now say that marked up data should not be hidden from users, but allow for cases where the markup can't be applied to text visible in the HTML. Their guidelines now say:

Markup should not be used to hide content not visible to users in any form, since it might create a misleading or deceptive search experience. For example, if the JSON-LD markup describes a performer, the HTML body should describe that same performer.

Google is still likely to ignore any data that it doesn't think is visible to users. The best way to get Google to pay attention to marked up data is to mark up data that is visible to users. In cases where Google feels you are being deceptive about this, they may penalize your site in the Google rankings.

JSON-LD

is the alternative way of doing things. A bonus can be that it does not polute your HTML. Example:

<script type="application/ld+json">

  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "Restaurant",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "addressLocality": "Sunnyvale",
    "addressRegion": "CA",
    "postalCode": "94086",
    "streetAddress": "1901 Lemur Ave"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4",
    "reviewCount": "250"
  },
  "name": "GreatFood",
  "openingHours": [
    "Mo-Sa 11:00-14:30",
    "Mo-Th 17:00-21:30",
    "Fr-Sa 17:00-22:00"
  ],
  "priceRange": "$$",
  "servesCuisine": [
    "Middle Eastern",
    "Mediterranean"
  ],
  "telephone": "(408) 714-1489",
  "url": "http://www.dishdash.com"

</script>

I recommend 2 techniques that worked in 100% cases for me (tested Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex).

First - meta tags:

<meta itemprop="xxx" content="yyy">

Second - hide using position:absolute, z-index, negative margins or similar things:

<span itemprop="xxx" style="position:absolute;top:-20000px"> yyy </span>

Second is more complicated but works if you want to put some hierarchical data (with many nodes in it)

Second method seems to be working vey good for black SEO with Google and others. I did not expect this in 2014, really.

If the issue about seo, google-search, bing, rich-snippets is resolved, there’s a good chance that your content will get indexed and you’ll start to show up in Google search results. This means a greater chance to drive organic search traffic to your site.