Web type: Is it possible for CSS features to affect SEO?

Can a custom ligatures invoked using CSS <discretionary-lig-values> affect the searchability of text? I can't see how this could be possible, but I've a client asking if I have a workaroud for this issue.

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Comments

  • As far as I understand, search engines operate on the underlying source of webpages, not the displayed page that users see. Unless you somehow hard-code the ligatures, they will not be present in the source, just the underlying characters.
  • What Mark said.
    And you would have to not only hard-code the ligatures, but also the client would also have to access them via that mechanism, to affect the searchability.
  • Thank you Mark, Tom. Exactly my understanding.
  • It's kind of the whole point of CSS to separate the content from the presentation for things like search. :smile: