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
-
May open the site's homepage...?
In mobile search results, many of my inner pages show the title tag, but the link is removed. And instead of showing the meta description, there is the following: May open the site's homepage
Web Design | | Dino64
Try anyway | Learn more Both "Try Anyway" and "Learn more" are links. Try anyway used to link to the homepage, but after we removed a redirect plugin and got rid of all the html mobile pages (now we're just using the Wordpress responsive layout), the link is now going to the correct page. So, it in fact, does NOT "open the site's homepage" any longer. But, we're still seeing this on mobile searches for our inner pages. It's been almost 3 weeks now. Any ideas on how to get this back to normal?0 -
Best Captcha Recommendations for Magento Site?
I am looking for the best captcha solution for our website which is magento based. Currently our web developer is recommending google captcha. Is this just a spam check list or will it do the job well? I would like any other recommendations that are clear for readers and are professional.
Web Design | | TeguarMarketing0 -
What to do with blog pagination / categories
On our new website we are going to have a blog that is custom built. However, you can browse the general blog with pagination. You can also nest into the categories or by month. Doing each will have a different link: Category: www.mywebsite.com/blog/web-guides/Month: www.mywebsite.com/blog/2014/january/ My question is what is the best thing to do with these pages. Rel Canonical them to the blog home? Or nofollow/noindex them? Will Google not see these as duplicate content pages?
Web Design | | vortexuk0 -
Site is getting crushed by spam traffic and Google Webmaster Tools giving crawl warnings. Also...
Currently hosting a site I'm planning on moving to a new server ASAP, 301 redirecting and have a domain that has nice authority and very old. On the current site I need to clean up the blog. I have a few questions actually.... 1. I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles? 2. I want to focus on the new site as the current site has too many issues but still managing to hang in their. is highly outdated yet I don't want to spend a ton of time on the site before the 301 redirect. With the Pigeon and Panda 4.0 rumors being released soon, I want to get the new site completed ASAP. Do you think it's better if I fix the 3. Would removing cloudflare make things better or worse with the crashing of my site due to high traffic (mainly spam on the blog.) 4. My best article by far is outdated, but should I waste time updating it before redirecting or should I just get the new site going? I did way too many guest posts thinking content is king, but at least checked the outgoing links Domain Auth, Page Auth, and MozTrust in OSE, but first off I'm going to remove a page that mentions I'm looking for guest bloggers. I tried to keep the posts relevant but at the time you could get away with 5. Anything I can do to slow down these spammers on Wordpress? I noticed most of them are checking for vulnerabilities but I'm keeping it up to date, have caching setup. Thanks!
Web Design | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
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 -
Will updating our site from ASP .NET 3.5 to ASP .NET 4.0 negatively affect SEO?
I've checked out some of the other posts related to .NET upgrades, but none specifically address ASP .NET 4.0. I understand that there are many advantages to upgrading, but as with any change made to site code I want to be 110% positive that this upgrade will not affect how Google ranks my client's pages. Since the URL extension isn't changing (will remain .aspx), I'm thinking that there won't be much of an affect on SEO at all. In fact, I'm making the argument that the upgrade will only improve page rank. Anyone go through this upgrade and experience any immediate benefits or disadvantages? Thanks for your help!
Web Design | | FreightTEK0 -
Worth Splitting Up Main Site into Several Microsites?
The company I work for offers a variety of very different products, that are sold to different audiences. Right now (and for the past 4 years) all the products have been listed on one main website. Over the years, we have accumulated over 200,000 links and rank relatively well in most of the product-specific keywords. Still, for business purposes we really feel that having a unique site specific to each product would be more beneficial than having them all on one site. What are the pros and cons of making a move to different subdomains from a main site. (i.e. instead of www.cleanedison.com/solar we would set up a solar.cleanedison.com)
Web Design | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
For a varied product type or keywords group is it best to have several sites?
Hello everyone... Question: I have 7-8 generic keywords that I would like to rank for, is it possible for one site to rank highly for all these different keywords, or would this be best achieved by making 2 or 3 websites in total targeting different keywords (product sectors)? More info: We are in a niche industry & would like to know if it would be beneficial to have several websites made for specific product types rather than one main site? Although these sub classifications of products are nice, they are competitive as they have a high search volume Would it be better to build specific websites that only do that one type of product and have related keyword in domain, content & blogs on the site to that effect to increase relevance and positions as a result? Thanks
Web Design | | Ray_UK0