is a negative text-indent considered cloaking?

Question

I am using the negative-text-indent technique I learned to show a text-image to the user, while hiding the corresponding actual text.

This way the user sees the fancy styled text while search engines can still index it.

However I am started to think this sounds like cloaking since I am serving different content to the user vs the spider. However, I am not using this in a deceitful way. Plus it seems like this is a popular technique.

So is it SEO-safe or is it cloaking?

Thanks!

Answer 1

No, this is not cloaking. From what I can tell, you are not actually serving different content, based on whether (you think) the client is a crawler. The content you are serving is just interpreted differently by browsers than by a spider. If you are actually serving different content, why are you doing this?

I'd even go as far as say that it is good accessibility practice. Screen readers will still pick up on the hidden text, text browsers will show it normally, etcetera.

Answer 2

No, this is not cloaking. I think the key phrase in Google's definition is:

If the file that Googlebot sees is not identical to the file that a typical user sees, then you're in a high-risk category.

You're not serving a different file - the content of the file served to GoogleBot is exactly the same as the content of the file served to users.

Answer 3

Thomas is right - this is not cloaking. CResult's quoted text implies that Cloaking is serving a different files for crawlers and users. Meaning, for the context of crawling, Content = File. Thus, if you serve the exact same file, you are not Cloaking anything.

It doesn't matter if you serve off-screen text. It doesn't matter how the content is presented to the user. It doesn't matter what is inside the file.