Text within modal pop-up boxes read by search engines?

RapidWeaver Classic
1

I’m curious to know if text that is within modal pop-up boxes is read by search engines?

Should I avoid putting important text in a modal pop-up box because search engines ignore this data? Or is the text in these boxes, although not visible unless clicked (then revealed), still read and treated like any other text on a page?

Thanks for your support.

2

I forgot to mention that I was thinking of putting a pop-up modal box inside of another pop-up modal box. Is this considered weird? Difficult to navigate for the user? Can Search engines see the text or images in a modal box?

Thanks for your support.

4

thanks for the input @SteveB. Perhaps it’s best practice to just insert the text directly on mobile (and not use modal pop-ups).

I’m not sure about the rules that you mention. I’d have to read about that.

Is it best to use the inbuilt Hide options for any stack, or use Joe’s Agent stack, or is there another best practice to have modals on one page and text on the same page on mobile?

5

There’s nothing wrong with using modal pop-ups on a mobile as long as they don’t pop up automatically and fill the screen with some kind of offer or sign up form.

But Google doesn’t place the same importance to text “hidden” behind a modal pop-up or an accordion etc.

So if the text is important to your users and search engines, place it prominently on the page. Also, apparently, Google doesn’t like different versions of content on different devices.

6

It’s going to depend on how that content is loaded by the particular ligthtbox or modal effect, something which you might need to ask the developer for advice…

If you are simply taking content from one container in a page and displaying it within a modal window, then lightboxes and modals should retain good SEO standards. Because as the page is loaded, that content is already in the page (the DOM) for search engines to see.

However a difficulty arrises if the content is being dynamically loaded using Javascript / AJAX techniques (or an iFrame). Then possibly search engines will not be able to see that content. The content might only come into the page much later after it has loaded.

7

@willwood Thanks for the detailed explanation.

@NeilUK thanks for confirming that the same importance isn’t place on text behind accordions or modals.

I appreciate the consistent efforts put forth by you and others on this forum.