Google can crawl web pages that make use of infinite scroll to some extent. Here’s how this works and how it affects your SEO:
This topic was discussed in the Google Search Central SEO Office Hours Hangout recorded on February 18th.
An individual named Nick Jabbour joins the livestream and asks John Mueller, a search advocate at Google, a series of questions about paginated content.
One question is about infinite scrolling and whether Googlebot has gotten to the point where it can handle it.
The short answer is: yesGooglebot can crawl and index web pages that utilize infinite scroll.
However, there are restrictions How much Infinite scrolling that Googlebot can handle.
For more details, continue reading the next section for Mueller’s complete answer.
Google limits crawling pages with infinite scroll
When asked if Googlebot can handle infinite scrolling, Mueller said:
“Hey… I thought I had a page about it, but I guess I may not have actually finished it.”
In 2014, Google published a help document titled “Suggestions for Infinite Scroll Search”.
Given that this page is nearly 10 years old, it’s unlikely that Muller is referring to it. However, the information in the help him documentation is still available.
This page contains instructions for coding a web page that uses infinite scroll in a manner similar to a paginated series.
You could go that route with an infinite scroll implementation, but you may not need it.
As Mueller continues to explain, Googlebot may be able to render all or most of the page in a manner that is already set.
“Basically, what happens when you render a page is use a pretty tall viewport, like if you have a very long screen. And then render the page and see what the page shows Check whether
Usually the JavaScript method you’re using to trigger infinite scroll will trigger some degree of infinite scroll. And whatever ends up being loaded there will be something that can be indexed.
So depending on how you implement infinite scrolling, a page this long can appear in your index. “
Mueller further states that Googlebot may not be able to render. all This depends on the page length and how infinite scroll is triggered.
The best way to see how much of your page Google can crawl is to use a URL inspection tool.
“Depending on how you trigger the infinite scroll, you might be loading something like the following page, so you don’t always have everything that fits on that page.
And sometimes I load 2 or 3 of these pages in one page with infinite scroll, but not all of them.
Therefore, we recommend testing with our inspection tool to see how much Google actually detects. “
As Mueller says, the URL inspection tool renders how Googlebot sees your page.
From there, you can determine if any adjustments are needed.
Listen to Mueller’s full response in the video below.
Featured image: fran_kie/Shutterstock
