Back in November of last year, Gary Illyes from Google said content hidden in tabs is okay in the mobile-first world. Well, John Mueller of Google also confirmed that today in a YouTube hangout at the 43 second mark and then again at the 35:29 mark into the video.

John said at the 35 minute mark:

In short, when the mobile first index rolls out, which won’t be for some time, content in tabs or hidden for user experience purposes, will rank just as well as content in plain view of the user.

Currently, content hidden in tabs do not rank as well in the desktop first index world. But that will all change with the mobile-first index said both Gary Illyes and John Mueller of Google.

Here are the video embeds at each start time:

To take you back a bit in history Google has told us for years that content hidden in tabs, accordions and so forth are not given full weight and may be ignored by their ranking algorithms. Not so in the mobile-first Google index.

Here are the transcripts:

Then later at the 35 minute mark:

Forum discussion at YouTube.