A while back, JR Oakes asked Martin Splitt of Google if he can confirm if there is a difference between display:none and visibility:hidden in terms of Google’s ability to “see” the content in the container? Martin said he does not think there is a difference. JR Oakes then decided to test it.

Here are those original tweets:

What he found is that there is no difference between display:none and visibility:hidden. He said “Google still finds and indexes both. They will both appear as answer boxes.” He even tested it to prove it.

JR said he “hid two Q/A pairs, one in visibility:hidden, the other display:none” and they both appeared in Google Search.

Here is a screen shot:

Thanks JR for testing this.

Forum discussion at Twitter.