Google Can’t See Content Behind Captchas - Search Engine Journal

Hiding content behind captchas is a bad SEO practice as Google's web crawler can't see what's behind them.

See which organic keywords actually drive conversions

Replace (not provided) with actual keywords and monitor their specific performance metrics in Google Analytics. Stop flying blind on essential SEO insights.

Try For Free

Google says websites can run into problems if they hide content behind captchas, as its web crawler won’t be able to see it.

Googlebot doesn’t interact with anything when it crawls webpages.

If it lands on a page with a captcha blocking the main content, it will assume that’s the only thing on the page.

There’s ways around this, however. While captchas are problematic there’s no reason to stop using them.

This is all stated by Google’s John Mueller during the Search Central SEO office-hours recorded on September 24, 2021.

The owner of a directory site writes in asking Mueller if the captchas they’ve implemented to avoid scraping can impact SEO.

In short — yes, they can impact SEO.

But there’s a way to use content-blocking captchas that doesn’t interfere with crawling or indexing.

Here’s what Mueller advises.

Google’s John Mueller on Captchas That Block Content

Mueller makes it clear that Googlebot doesn’t fill out captchas — even Google-based captchas.

If the captcha has to be filled out before accessing the content, then the content won’t get crawled.

Google will be able to index the page, but none of the content behind the captcha will be used...

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.