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
-
Page Replication on Search
Hi. We recently created a Christmas category page on our eCommerce website (christowhome.co.uk). Earlier today, I Googled ‘Christow Christmas Silhouette Lights’ (Christow being the name of our website and Christmas silhouette lights being one of the sub-categories we recently created). I was curious to see how the page appeared on search. Bizarrely, the page appeared multiple times on search (if you click on the link above, it should show you the search results). As you can see, multiple meta titles and descriptions have been created for the same page. This is something that is affecting a number of our Christmas category pages. I don't quite understand why this has happened. We recently added filters to the category. Could the filters be responsible? Any idea how I can prevent this from happening? How I can stop Google indexing these weird replica pages? Many thanks, Dave
Technical SEO | | Davden0 -
Pages not indexed
Hey everyone Despite doing the necessary checks, we have this problem that only a part of the sitemap is indexed.
Technical SEO | | conversal
We don't understand why this indexation doesn't want to take place. The major problem is that only a part of the sitemap is indexed. For a client we have several projects on the website with several subpages, but only a few of these subpages are indexed. Each project has 5 to 6 subpages. They all should be indexed. Project: https://www.brody.be/nl/nieuwbouwprojecten/nieuwbouw-eeklo/te-koop-eeklo/ Mainly subelements of the page are indexed: https://www.google.be/search?source=hp&ei=gZT1Wv2ANouX6ASC5K-4Bw&q=site%3Abrody.be%2Fnl%2Fnieuwbouwprojecten%2Fnieuwbouw-eeklo%2F&oq=site%3Abrody.be%2Fnl%2Fnieuwbouwprojecten%2Fnieuwbouw-eeklo%2F&gs_l=psy-ab.3...30.11088.0.11726.16.13.1.0.0.0.170.1112.8j3.11.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..4.6.693.0..0j0i131k1.0.p6DjqM3iJY0 Do you have any idea what is going wrong here?
Thanks for your advice! Frederik
Digital marketeer at Conversal0 -
Old url is still indexed
A couple of months ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. in Google Webmaster Tools the amount of indexed pages is reduced to 1. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Delete indexed spam pages
Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone had this same situation, or may know of a solution. One of our sites was recently pharmahacked 😞 We found an entire pharmaceutical site in one of the folder of our site. We were able to delete it, but now Google is showing us on not found error for those pages we deleted. First, I guess the question is will this harm us? If so, anyway we can fix this? Obliviously we don't want to do a 303 redirect for spam pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Bridge_Education_Group0 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
Removing a staging area/dev area thats been indexed via GWT (since wasnt hidden) from the index
Hi, If you set up a brand new GWT account for a subdomain, where the dev area is located (separate from the main GWT account for the main live site) and remove all pages via the remove tool (by leaving the page field blank) will this definately not risk hurting/removing the main site (since the new subdomain specific gwt account doesn't apply to the main site in any way) ?? I have a new client who's dev area has been indexed, dev team has now prevented crawling of this subdomain but the 'the stable door was shut after the horse had already bolted' and the subdomains pages are on G's index so we need to remove the entire subdomain development area asap. So we are going to do this via the remove tool in a subdomain specific new gwt account, but I just want to triple check this wont accidentally get main site removed too ?? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Why has Google stopped indexing my content?
Mystery of the day! Back on December 28th, there was a 404 on the sitemap for my website. This lasted 2 days before I noticed and fixed. Since then, Google has not indexed my content. However, the majority of content prior to that date still shows up in the index. The website is http://www.indieshuffle.com/. Clues: Google reports no current issues in Webmaster tools Two reconsideration requests have returned "no manual action taken" When new posts are detected as "submitted" in the sitemap, they take 2-3 days to "index" Once "indexed," they cannot be found in search results unless I include url:indieshuffle.com The sitelinks that used to pop up under a basic search for "Indie Shuffle" are now gone I am using Yoast's SEO tool for Wordpress (and have been for years) Before December 28th, I was doing 90k impressions / 4.5k clicks After December 28th, I'm now doing 8k impressions / 1.3k clicks Ultimately, I'm at a loss for a possible explanation. Running an SEOMoz audit comes up with warnings about rel=canonical and a few broken links (which I've fixed in reaction to the report). I know these things often correct themselves, but two months have passed now, and it continues to get progressively worse. Thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | indieshuffle0