How does Infinite Scrolling work with unique URLS as users scroll down? And is this SEO friendly?

[Sundance_Kidd]

I was on a site today and as i scrolled down and viewed the other posts that were below the top one i read, i noticed that each post below the top one had its own unique URL. I have not seen this and was curious if this method of infinite scrolling is SEO friendly. Will Google's spiders scroll down and index these posts below the top one and index them? The URLs of these lower posts by the way were the same URLs that would be seen if i clicked on each of these posts. Looking at Google's preferred method for Infinite scrolling they recommend something different - https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html .

Welcome all insight. Thanks!

Christian

[max.favilli]

I regret I have not understood the question, what do you mean with "unique urls"? Can you post a link to show that website?

[Sundance_Kidd]

Check pymnts.com

[RuthBurrReedy]

Hi Christian,

What you're seeing is exactly what Google recommends for infinite scroll in the resource you link to. It breaks the page up into component resources (separate URLs) each of which could be accessed on its own. Their examples use dynamic parameters to break up into e.g. page=2, but if your infinite- or long-scrolling page isn't paginated content, there's no reason why each component couldn't have its own URL that is accessed as you scroll down.

I actually really like this method as a compromise between the "one long page with all the information on it" approach to web design and the "landing pages for people looking for specific bits of information" approach to SEO. For example, I often have SAAS clients who want all the information about what their product does to be one one long page. This is great for people who want to research the whole product at once, but makes it hard for me to optimize for keywords pertaining to individual features of the product. The solution is to have separate landing pages that talk about specific features, all linked together in one "product" page that scrolls using the methodology outlined in the Google resource you linked to. Plus, it means that people who are just looking for that one feature arrive on a page that's about that feature, instead of having to scroll to find what they're looking for.

With the infinite scroll situation, Google is only usually going to crawl and index what is available to the user before more of the page loads - so if you want Google to crawl and index all of the content on your infinite-scroll page, this is the way to do it. It's also better for users who don't have JavaScript enabled. I hope that makes sense and let me know if you have more questions!

[Sundance_Kidd]

Thanks Ruth! Greatly appreciate your help.

So if I understand correctly then Google will index just the 1st post then? Since the lower posts all have their own unique urls then Google will just index those as it crawls I assume (of course it's always wise to have a site map).

[RuthBurrReedy]

Google will probably only count the content of the first post (or however much content displays at initial page load time) when ranking and indexing that infinite-scroll page, yes, so if you want the rest of that content in the index I'd give it its own URLs. However, Google is getting better at JavaScript and is always unpredictable, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that it would index more content from the infinite scroll page than initially loads - don't be too surprised if you see that, but I wouldn't count on it.

[Sundance_Kidd]

each of the lower posts does have its own URL. As you noted above, that unique URL does show up as the user scrolls lower, but there are links to these URLs from main nav too.

[RuthBurrReedy]

Yes! You asked "So if I understand correctly then Google will index just the 1st post then?" and there's no way of guaranteeing what Google will or won't do. But that is probably what will happen.

[Sundance_Kidd]

Thx again!!