E-Commerce Mobile Pagination Dillema

[Don34]

Hi Everybody,

I'm managing the SEO for an E-commerce site with different desktop and mobile sites (meaning, not responsive).

We're changing the way reviews on mobile product pages will be displayed from 'view all' to pagination (due to server load). Basically the above the fold part of the page will always display the product, and below the fold will have x numbers of reviews on each page.

But here is where it gets tricky:

1 - A different number of review pages will exist on mobile vs desktop (due to different no. of reviews per page on each device) - so I'm wondering what's the solution regarding canonicals. Usually every mobile page points to its desktop parallel, but now we'll have non-matching pages.

2 - The users will be able to change the no. of reviews displayed on each page. So the number of paginated pages will change accordingly.

I was thinking about a solution where all the reviews will be in the first page's html (and only X of them will be displayed on screen), and all the other paginated pages will be created dynamically (with # and won't be indexed, so basically no pagination in mobile).

Does anyone think this can be seen as cloaking or has any other thoughts?

Thanks,

Sarah

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Sarah,

This is definitely not cloaking as that is something different from what you're describing. That is more related to Google showing something completely else then to your users. I would go with your suggestion and make sure that the reviews would always be included in the first view so you can make sure to both your users and to Google that it's the most important one.

Martijn.

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Sarah,

First of all, Martijn is right, any of your solutions are definitely not cloaking. Google understands the complications of pagination.

Your solution is probably the simplest, as long as that extra content doesn't slow page load too much. You can also paginate in a way that's even between mobile and desktop, so multiple mobile pages can canonical to the same desktop page. For example, if the desktop version of review pages lists 10 reviews per page, and the mobile version lists 5, then mobile pages 1 and 2 would refer to desktop page 1; mobile pages 3 and 4 would refer to desktop page 2; etc.

Either way, you're on the right track!

Kristina