How does Progressive Loading, aka what Facebook does, impact proper search indexation?
-
My client is planning on integrating progressive loading into their main product level pages (those pages most important to conversions and revenue).
I am not skilled on "progressive laoding" but was told this is what Facebook does. Currently, the site's pages are tabbed and use Ajax. Is there any negative impact by changing this up by including progressive loading?
If anyone can help me understand what this is and how it might impact a site from an SEO perspective, please let me know.
thanks a ton!!
Janet
-
Ok so long time in getting back to this, but here's what the client was actually referring to and found a good post on optimization around the new approach. SEO Tips for Infinite Scrolling | Adam Sherk - excellent read! Wasn't sure exactly what this programmer/client was referring to, but this was it! Thanks all for the help!
-
I think what your developer is talking about, and what Facebook does, is the idea of all of your content being on one page. Progressive loading or "infinite scroll" is when you scroll down to the bottom of a page (like e.g. a category page on your blog) and more content loads on the page itself, as opposed to having to click to page 2 of results to view more content.
The problem with doing this is that even though the content continues to load on the same URL, it's being pulled from another place - so anything beyond that first set of content is being loaded by a JavaScript call. That means that search engines can't index that content that's being loaded as the user scrolls down - and users with JavaScript turned off also won't be able to view the rest of your content. This can be a big problem on main product level pages like your client is thinking of doing, since any links to other products that are beyond that initial page load won't be crawled by search engines.
If you're going to go the infinite scrolling/progressive loading route, make sure that when JavaScript is disabled, there's a crawlable "next page" link to a new, static URL for the next page of results. Basically, make sure that there's a more old-school "previous page/next page" environment with static page URLs that search engines and users without JavaScript can browse, in addition to your progressive loading page.
Here's a link to a similar question from last year that has more information: http://www.seomoz.org/q/infinite-scrolling-vs-pagination-on-an-ecommerce-site
-
That doesn't make much sense to me.
Just look at how Facebook loads... All the text pops right up, and then the images filter in. It just doesn't make any sense to me how it could 'exclude' anything.
Is there a way you could implement it on a small scale just to test it in the beginning? Maybe a page or two, or just a section of the site to start with... Then you would at least have some data to look at and help you make an informed decision.
I haven't been in this part of the world for very long, but I know that progressive loading isn't something that has popped up much in my research/reading. Even when I looked around (briefly) I didn't find anything that connected to SEO.
-
Thank you Modulusman - I thought so too - but the way the programmer was talking made it seem like it was some major exclusion of content or something.
Thanks for your input!
-
I may be wrong here... but isn't progressive loading mostly for images?
If this is what you're talking about.. I'm not sure how it would make much of a difference how things are indexed. It seems like "once upon a time" things had to be saved a certain way, but I'm not even sure that's the case anymore.
It may help with mobile conversion... depending on whether you're more focused on copy or media.
I know this isn't much, but maybe it will jog something for someone.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Indexed, not submitted in sitemap
I have this problem for the site's blog
Technical SEO | | seomozplan196
There is no problem when I check the yoast plugin setting , but some of my blog content is not on the map site but indexed. Did you have such a problem? What is the cause? my website name is missomister1 -
My Website stopped being in the Google Index
Hi there, So My website is two weeks old, and I published it and it was ranking at about page 10 or 11 for a week maybe a bit longer. The last few days it dropped off the rankings, which I assumed was the google algorithm doing its thing but when I checked Google Search Console it says my domain is not in the index. 'This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.' I click request indexing, then after a bit, it goes green saying it was successfully indexed. Then when I refresh the website it gives me the same message 'This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.' Not sure why it says this, any ideas or help is appreciated cheers.
Technical SEO | | sydneygardening0 -
CDN Being Crawled and Indexed by Google
I'm doing a SEO site audit, and I've discovered that the site uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that's being crawled and indexed by Google. There are two sub-domains from the CDN that are being crawled and indexed. A small number of organic search visitors have come through these two sub domains. So the CDN based content is out-ranking the root domain, in a small number of cases. It's a huge duplicate content issue (tens of thousands of URLs being crawled) - what's the best way to prevent the crawling and indexing of a CDN like this? Exclude via robots.txt? Additionally, the use of relative canonical tags (instead of absolute) appear to be contributing to this problem as well. As I understand it, these canonical tags are telling the SEs that each sub domain is the "home" of the content/URL. Thanks! Scott
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0 -
Cache pages in search results
My URL is: pure mobile . ca when searching on google for "puremobile note 2 defender" the search results are coming up with the incorrect title pages of my search results - for some reason all the search results are coming up with "unlocked cell phone" at the end of the title. but on the android and on my desktop - they show the correct title of my pages. we used to deal with unlocked cell phone ( over a year ago) - and all meta tags and title tags have been fully updated. how can i let google know to update these results.
Technical SEO | | puremobile0 -
Can changing a host provider impact search rankings?
I was wondering if changing my host provider would impact my search rankings on the major search engines?
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Impact of Adding a Mobile Site
Hi, we ranked very well for keywords trophies and trophies and awards on our home page, trophycentral.com for quite a while (many years). Recently we dropped off the charts, but are not sure why. So we posted this issue last week and got some great suggestions and are in the process of addressing them. However, we are now wondering if we caused this issue when we launched our mobile site a few months ago (timing makes sense). Has anyone had trouble with a mobile site impacting their traditional site? I am wondering if maybe google is splitting the traffic to the trophycentral domain and the m.trophycentral.com domain? Here is the code we have< script type="text/javascript" src="http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/sportsawards/mobile-redirection.js">script>Appreciate your comments!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Does Google index XML files?
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Www or no www in search results??
I am working with a client, and when I check on SERP placement, I never see the "www" in the SERP's only nameofcustomer.com not www.nameofcustomer.com. Of course there is a redirect going on...Question is...should this matter at all? I dont understand the relationship between this kind of redirect and SEO. Thank Mozzers
Technical SEO | | Giggy0