Does google always downrank pages with hidden texts

Question

I'm creating a FAQ for my page. To help the user to get a better overview I want to hide all answers and only display the questions. If the user clicks on a question the answer is set to display:block.

I know that google also reads and indexes hidden content, but I also know that hiding text is a common technique for spammers and thus probably discredited by google, resulting in getting wiped from search results.

But I'm wondering; Does google always downrank pages that have large amounts of hidden text? I mean an FAQ like this is not that uncommon. Should I not use this kind of FAQ?

Answer 1

This will not be an issue at all. Google doesn't penalize websites because of hidden content. They penalize sites that hide content for the explicit purpose of manipulating their search engine rankings. So what you're doing is fine since any user can see that content simply by clicking on a link. In fact, what you're doing is extremely common and even used on the FAQ page of this website.