Google’s best practices for “Read more” links are sensible. But if current pages are serving users well, don’t rush to change them.
Google offers guidance on its little “Read more” links that sometimes appear within a search result and jump a visitor to a specific part of the page. If we want to improve the chance of those links appearing, Google says the relevant content should be visible when the page loads, the page should not forcibly scroll people somewhere else on load, and any URL hash used for deep linking should be left intact.
That’s all useful to know. These links are clearly worth having, as they may make our result look a little more substantial and easier to trust. If Google is willing to point searchers straight to a relevant section, we would usually take that.
However, it would be easy to read this kind of documentation and decide that accordion layouts and JavaScript-controlled page behaviour are now somehow wrong. But Google is not saying these patterns are bad in themselves. It is just saying they may reduce the likelihood of a particular search feature appearing.
Some page behaviour exists for very good reasons. A long page may genuinely be easier to use when parts of it are collapsed by default. Product pages sometimes need tabs to stop information becoming a wall of text. In those cases, changing the page just to chase a possible “Read more” link may be the wrong trade. We should never optimise for the possibility of a prettier result rather than the quality of the visit after the click.
If a section is hidden for no strong reason, or if a developer is stripping hash fragments from URLs out of habit, or if forced scrolling is getting in the way, then this is a good prompt to tidy things up. That’s all though. If a page behaves the way it does for an important user reason, that reason should still come first.