: Hidden form and SEO I'm using hidden forms, to collects some statistics. Will it have any penalty from search engines ? Update 1: I'm collecting some statistics, based on user interaction with

@Barnes591

Not only do you render the form, but you also interact with it through JavaScript. I don't think it will have any kind of adverse effect on your ranking, if that's what you're concerned with.

And if you have content that is generated through JavaScript, especially AJAX, then it will not be crawled unless you specifically tell it to.

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@Kimberly868

Anything hidden is perceived as a threat. You website might be indicated as a suspicious and than you will lose potential clients or visitors.

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@Pope3001725

It doesn't seem like this would be a problem as I don't see this form containing any kind of content that might be possibly used to benefit your rankings. But if you're using JavaScript to populate and submit the form why not go all the way and use JavaScript to capture the data and submit it via Ajax so there is no hidden form necessary?

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@Margaret670

How would you like your website to show up in search results with a little note that says, "Warning: this site may harm your computer"?

Now ask yourself if you can be 100% certain that google won't accidentally think your devious tactics are meant to harm their users in some way.

In brief: yes, I do think there is some potential for this practice to backfire.

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@Angela700

As John commented, this seems an odd approach, but there are two things to consider:


Search engines can't fill out forms - but they can/do try to submit with what they algorithmically calculate will be correct information for given labels/inputs to get to the 'walled garden'.
Hidden forms could be seen as not serving your website visitors in their best interests, which Google takes a dim view of (if they discover you doing it), as this requires some active submission - there's much better ways of doing this - using cookie tracking or session data etc.


Definitely worth reconsidering your approach.

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