Integrity, control 2 of 7
G-02 Do not hide ranking content from people
Do not hide text or links to manipulate search or AI answers. Legitimate accordions, accessible labels and responsive interfaces are not automatically deceptive.
- Priority
- Gate. A FAIL stops publish or launch.
- Hard gate
- Yes. A FAIL stops publication, whatever the score.
- Change class
- AUTO_WITH_TEST: A candidate requiring relevant tests.
- Quality bucket
- Not scored: hard gate only
Why it matters
Text and links that visitors cannot see exist only for crawlers, so users and search engines end up reading different pages. Google's spam policies treat this as ranking manipulation. A page that relies on it risks losing trust in search and in AI answers.
Evidence to review
- Rendered screenshots, DOM and accessibility-tree samples for desktop and mobile.
- Review the purpose of each flagged hidden element rather than failing CSS patterns blindly.
How to implement
- Inspect off-screen, transparent, zero-sized and injected content.
- Compare what a normal user can access with what a crawler or agent receives.
- Remove hidden instructions asking assistants to rank or recommend the business.
How UltimateSEO checks this
Partly automated. The crawl gives a signal, and a person decides the state.
Evidence needed: a review of templates for text or links hidden by CSS, off-screen positioning or colour matching; the crawler only sees the raw HTML, not the rendered intent.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Sources
- [G4] Google spam policies
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.3, catalogue dated 2026-10-14. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.