If the order of products on a page changes each time the page is loaded, does this have a negative effect on the SEO of those pages?

[Kerry_Jones]

Hello, a client of mine has a number of category pages that each have a list of products. Each time the page is reloaded the order of those products changes. Does this have a negative effect on the pages' rankings?

Thank you

[dotfly]

A very interesting question!

You have to think about that issue more precisely: is the whole content of the site changing? Or is just a section of this page rotating?

If there is rotation of a section only, this won`t do your site any harm but if the whole content changes every time the site is opened / re-loaded, then this might cause some problems.

You have to give this site one static component, even if it`s just the title of the page and 2 or 3 short introductional sentences which do not change so frequently. Put them at the top of the page.

If you do so and the rest of the site changes, then the worst case would be that Google will change the descriptive text while displaying the answers on the search queries only.

It might also be a question of how this rotation of products is technical realized?

[Masoko-T]

Hi Kerri

Does the URL change with each "reload"? ex:

www.mypage.com/page1

www.mypage.com/page1/index.php?sort=time_remaining&sort_direction

If the pages have different URLs but basically the same content presented in a different way, then you might have a problem.

Can you give us the URLs in question? it might help me/us to better understand the situation.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Hi Kerry,

Masoko has a good point.  If the URLs of the page change each time, there will be a different affect than if it's the same URL or you use the canonical tag on them.  So, an example would be helpful.

That said, assuming the URL stays the same, then the question is whether the content is just changing order or different content/products are being displayed.

• If the same products are displayed, but in a different order, then you may see some minor fluctuations in rankings because the content is shifting around, but it shouldn't be much.  This could affect both the rankings of the category page and the products displayed on the category page.  However, since there really isn't any such thing as static rankings, you may not even notice.
• If different products are being displayed every time, then you may see some larger fluctuations, especially if you don't have much other content on the page other than the products.  Again, you may see changes in the rankings both of the category pages and the product pages.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com