{"id":37461,"date":"2015-08-06T14:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T21:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/?p=37461"},"modified":"2019-07-08T09:56:50","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T16:56:50","slug":"infinite-scrolling-seo-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/infinite-scrolling-seo-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Infinite Scroll &#038; SEO: Do They Mix?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At a recent SEO training, I met a webmaster who excitedly told me that he was going to soon be implementing infinite scroll on his website. LATimes.com&#8217;s indefinitely scrolling articles immediately popped into my head and I told him that was awesome \u2026 and then I wondered why we don&#8217;t use infinite scroll on our own blog or site. So I sought out our SEO Manager Robert Ramirez\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/seo\/search-engine-optimization\/\">search engine optimization<\/a> advice when I returned back to the office.<\/p>\n<p>He agreed that there are benefits to infinite scrolling, noting that it may improve:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>User experience, as it can lead users to content they might not have otherwise discovered<\/li>\n<li>Time on page, as users theoretically read longer<\/li>\n<li>Load time of\u00a0above-the-fold content<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>However, infinite scroll carries risk for content indexing and ranking, and may even decrease user interaction on the site. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Infinite-Scroll1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-37473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Infinite-Scroll1.png\" alt=\"Infinite Scroll Stop Sign\" width=\"550\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Infinite-Scroll1.png 1200w, https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Infinite-Scroll1-300x157.png 300w, https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Infinite-Scroll1-1024x535.png 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Read on to discover what infinite scrolling is, the potential SEO hazard it poses, the problems Etsy encountered when it added infinite scroll, and why our recommendation is to proceed with caution.<\/p>\n<h2>What Is Infinite Scroll?<\/h2>\n<p>First, a definition. Infinite scrolling is the process of loading content when the user brings it into view \u2014 an image, a video, or content won&#8217;t load until it <em>needs<\/em> to load, i.e. when the user scrolls or clicks.<\/p>\n<p>Note: Technically, infinite scrolling is not actually infinite \u2014 it&#8217;s seemingly infinite. Take Twitter for example \u2014 spend a day or two continually scrolling, and you&#8217;d <em>eventually <\/em>reach the end of tweets.<\/p>\n<h2>Infinite Scroll in the Wild<\/h2>\n<p>Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest all use a variation of infinite scrolling. Infinite scrolling is also used on media sites such as LATimes.com and ESPN.com \u2014 when one article ends the user literally scrolls right onto another one. Infinite scrolling is also used on product pages for some ecommerce sites.<\/p>\n<h2>How Infinite Scroll Can Hurt SEO<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Any time you implement JavaScript-enabled features, you run the risk of making it harder for search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, to crawl your site&#8217;s content<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller summed up the problem on the Google Webmaster Central Blog:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With infinite scroll, crawlers cannot always emulate manual user behavior\u2014like scrolling or clicking a button to load more items\u2014so they don&#8217;t always access all individual items in the feed or gallery. If crawlers can\u2019t access your content, it\u2019s unlikely to surface in search results.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In order to be crawled, each article or page of products must have its own natural crawl path, i.e. an individual URL that is linked to within the site.<\/p>\n<p>For those who are sold on infinite scrolling, the ultimate search engine optimization advice comes from Mueller&#8217;s must-read &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2014\/02\/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html\">Infinite Scroll Search-friendly Recommendations<\/a>.&#8221; Here he outlines the steps for how to implement infinite scroll while still having content that stands to be indexed.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-37469 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/infinite-scrolling-seo-risk-e1438881149871.png\" alt=\"infinite-scrolling-seo-risk\" width=\"550\" height=\"287\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Infinite Scroll Is Good for User Experience \u2026 But Not Always<\/h2>\n<p>In theory, infinite scroll will keep your users scrolling through content on your pages, but sometimes the infinite scrolling backfires. Because people aren&#8217;t necessarily conditioned to scroll rather than click, they might find the experience awkward and\/or overwhelming. Consider this takeaway from a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/infinite-scrolling\/\">Nielsen study<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are <strong>psychological consequences to endless scrolling that can hurt the user experience<\/strong> as well. For task-driven activities, infinite scrolling can feel like drowning in an information abyss with no end in sight. People who need specific types of information expect content to be grouped and layered according to relevance, by pages. Web users don\u2019t mind clicking links (e.g., a link to the next page) if each click is meaningful and leads them closer to the desired goal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>Etsy: A Cautionary Tale<\/h2>\n<p>The popular handmade and vintage item marketplace site Etsy <a href=\"https:\/\/mcfunley.com\/design-for-continuous-experimentation\">implemented infinite scroll in 2012<\/a> and the results were less than positive. Users clicked and favorited fewer items. They also bought fewer items from search. Etsy users didn&#8217;t like the change, and, accordingly, Etsy removed infinite scroll from the site. Etsy&#8217;s formal principal engineer Dan McKinley held that infinite scroll can have a positive impact, but that site owners should work to understand the people using their websites before making such a big change.<\/p>\n<h2>Bottom Line: Proceed with Caution<\/h2>\n<p>While we acknowledge that infinite scroll can provide a fresh user experience, we don\u2019t use infinite scrolling on our own website because we don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s worth the potential SEO risk. If you or your client are interested in implementing infinite scroll, we&#8217;d advise you to make sure your pages are indexable and point you toward Mueller&#8217;s clear-cut guidelines. Pay close attention to your KPIs after implementation, perhaps survey visitors about website satisfaction, and always track the effect of major design and user experience changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Infinite scrolling is the process of loading content when the user brings it into view, i.e. when the user scrolls or clicks. Infinite scrolling is great for: <\/p>\n<p>\u2022 User experience, as it can lead users to content they might not have otherwise discovered<br \/>\n\u2022 Time on page, as users theoretically read longer<br \/>\n\u2022 Reducing above-the-fold content load time<\/p>\n<p><strong>However, infinite scroll carries risk for content indexing and ranking, and may even decrease user interaction on the site.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/infinite-scrolling-seo-risks\/\">Read on<\/a> to discover what infinite scrolling is, the potential SEO hazard it poses, the problems Etsy encountered when it added infinite scroll, and why our recommendation is to proceed with caution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":154,"featured_media":37474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1232,107],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<title>BruceClay - Infinite Scroll &amp; SEO: Do They Mix?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Infinite scrolling can be great for user experience, yet it poses SEO risks. 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