Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Infinite Scrolling vs. Pagination on an eCommerce Site
-
My company is looking at replacing our ecommerce site's paginated browsing with a Javascript infinite scroll function for when customers view internal search results--and possibly when they browse product categories also. Because our internal linking structure isn't very robust, I'm concerned that removing the pagination will make it harder to get the individual product pages to rank in the SERPs.
We have over 5,000 products, and most of them are internally linked to from the browsing results pages in the category structure: e.g. Blue Widgets, Widgets Under $250, etc.
I'm not too worried about removing pagination from the internal search results pages, but I'm concerned that doing the same for these category pages will result in de-linking the thousands of product pages that show up later in the browsing results and therefore won't be crawlable as internal links by the Googlebot.
Does anyone have any ideas on what to do here? I'm already arguing against the infinite scroll, but we're a fairly design-driven company and any ammunition or alternatives would really help.
For example, would serving a different page to the Googlebot in this case be a dangerous form of cloaking? (If the only difference is the presence of the pagination links.) Or is there any way to make rel=next and rel=prev tags work with infinite scrolling?
-
Hi Guys,
I was going to post a separate question here., but this thread seems to have answer the questions very well.
My client has infinite scrolling on his product pages but also have rel="prev" and rel="next" (but no actual physical page 1, page 2, page 3) buttons. I was just reading the rel="prev" and rel="next" should be in the in this case anyway. Does this mean we don't need actual buttons?
I am confirming the date this was put on, as I can't see any reduction in pages indexed which is one of the concerns above.
Regards
Neil
-
Thanks for your replies everyone.
We weren't sure if Google would look at JS removing the page navigation as cloaking or not, so that's still a bit of a concern. We were reading Rand's post from 2008 on the subject http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-cloaking-it-exists-its-permitted-its-useful and Matt Cutts' replies on the subject. We know it was a few years ago, but he still seemed to be saying to be over-cautious with that kind of thing.
Should we be worried about cloaking if we use JS to "hide" the page nav?
-
The correct way to handle this (and quite frankly, any javascript functionality) is to build it to work without javascript (keep the pagination), then have the javascript remove the pagination and implement infinite scrolling. This ensures that visitors with JS disabled get the full experience of the site, search engines can easily crawl your full catalog, and users with JS enabled get the "enhanced" experience you desire from a UX standpoint.
It's not an "either or" scenario. You can absolutely have an easily indexed site that extensively uses JS.
-
You should have both. Keep the paged navigation at top, but keep the infinite scroll. Now you have the best of both worlds.
Although, I don't think the infinite scroll would end up 'delinking' thousands of pages. How often do you see store.com/category/page/6 in results, anyway? If it's a popular term, it's going to be for the main category landing page.
Serving up different content to Google is always a bad idea unless you have a good reason. This problem doesn't qualify.
-
Its a bit technical but you can go through this https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/ to make sure the dynamic page that you generate is actually indexable by Google.
That said 5000+ products infinite scroll is a bit scary and I would look at using rel=next and rel=prev for the pagination ( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html )
I am not too sure what you mean by " internally linked to from the browsing results pages in the category structure: e.g. Blue Widgets, Widgets Under $250, etc. "
If you are referring to ability for users to sort through those products by picking one of the options like Blue Widgets, Widgets Under $250, etc. I would suggest rel canonical those pages to the base page . This should get you started http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
-
you are coprrect, this will lead to de-indexing of your pages, unless your scroll page has every product on it at load, but this would mean a slow page for users. I assume that you are going to get pages on scroll via ajax or somthing on demand.
You would need to have to have other pages that link to the products.
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
-
Incorporating Spanish Page/Site
We bought an exact match domain (in Spanish) to incorporate with regular website for a particular keyword. This is our first attempt at this, and while we do have Spanish speaking staff that will translate/create a nice, quality page, we're not going to redo everything in Spanish page. Any advice on how to implement this? Do I need to create a whole other website in Spanish? Will that be duplicate content if I do? Can I just set it up to show the first page in Spanish, but if they click on anything else it redirects to our site? I'm pretty clueless on this, so if anything I've suggested is off-the-wall or a violation, I'm really just spit-balling, trying to figure out how to implement this. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Duplicate Content Issue: Mobile vs. Desktop View
Setting aside my personal issue with Google's favoritism for Responsive websites, which I believe doesn't always provide the best user experience, I have a question regarding duplicate content... I created a section of a Wordpress web page (using Visual Composer) that shows differently on mobile than it does on desktop view. This section has the same content for both views, but is formatted differently to give a better user experience on mobile devices. I did this by creating two different text elements, formatted differently, but containing the same content. The problem is that both sections appear in the source code of the page. According to Google, does that mean I have duplicate content on this page?
Web Design | | Dino640 -
How long should an old site redirecting to a new site remain activated on a server?
Once I switch a site to a new domain (with links to corresponding/relative pages), will I have to keep the old site live forever for those links to work, or how long should I wait before I inactivate the old site on our server?
Web Design | | jwanner0 -
What's the point of an EU site?
Buongiorno from 18 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 On this site http://www.milwaukeetool.eu/ the client wants to hold on to the EU site despite there being multiple standalone country sittes e.g. http://www.milwaukeetool.fr & http://www.milwaukeetool.co.uk Why would you ever need an EU site? I mean who ever searches for an EU site? If the client holds on to the eu site despite my position it's a waiste of time from a search perspective is the folowing the best appeasment? When a user enters the eu url or redirects to country the detected, eg I'm in Paris I enter www.milwaukeetool.eu it redirects to http://www.milwaukeetool.fr. My felling this would be the most pragmatic thing to do? Any ideas please,
Web Design | | Nightwing
Cioa,
David0 -
B2C directory website adding B2B ecommerce sub-domain
Hey fellow Mozzers, Just got back from Mozcon and enjoyed getting to know a handful of you. I do in house SEO for a B2B wholesaler. We have a B2C website directory for homeowners to locate contractors to work on their home. On the site we have a products section which includes tech specs but not pricing. Our contractors have been asking us to add the ability to purchase their items online, so we are wanting to add a B2B sub-domain (store.domain.com) to our website for the contractors to purchase products online. We do not want consumers to be able to purchase the items and will have pricing behind a log in. I have a few questions that I'm hoping you might be able to answer: 1. What would be the best practice to not have duplicate content errors with products that are listed on both sites? Should we rel-canonical items shown on both domains or do something else?
Web Design | | AC_Pro
2. We are not against having the new site be crawled, but will Google be upset/ding rankings because pricing is behind a log-in? Are there certain best-practices for B2B ecommerce sites?
3. Do you know of any other sites that have done this/do you have any recommendations on how to best implement this?0 -
Site Activity, SEO, and behind login
I have a site that provides online education and as such, most of the user activity happens behind a login. This has me thinking about potential SEO impacts with a few questions that maybe someone could lend some light on: How important is activity (above just search activity) to the search engines Would it help to enter these pages, even though they're behind a login, into GA as we have with the front-end of the site Does a subdomain make a difference (right now we implement the course as a subdomain of the main site Lastly, as I was looking at compete.com, I am wondering how they get these use statistics?
Web Design | | uwaim20120 -
Live Text in Navigation Vs. Image - Does this affect SEO
I recently was asked the question if having live text in the navigation vs and image affect seo. For example, refer to this link http://markup.io/v/avsaenq856kw the navigation highlighted is seperate images. The html elements read : /images/procedures.png"> Live text html reads like this: Breast » What is better for seo value, or does it now matter having live text or an image?
Web Design | | Red_Spot_Interactive0 -
Wordpress vs. mvc framework
What's the benefits of choosing an mvc framework such as codeigniter or cakephp over wordpress? Wordpress has so many plugins, and a universally known UI for customers, it just saves a ton of time. However, a lot of the 'big guys' like SEOmoz and Distilled(?) use Cakephp and other mvc frameworks so it has me wondering what the benefits are...... anyone?
Web Design | | DonnieCooper2