Infinite Scroll can ruin your web shop.
It can negatively impact the organic rankings of products located on pagination pages due to the lack of Link Juice and may even lead to a situation where the Google bot cannot see the pagination or the products on those pages.
This can result in products being classified as “orphan pages,” which Google does not favor. All of this can significantly harm the organic rankings of a Magento store, especially in cases where customers frequently search for products, such as in a phone store.
🕵️♂️ How Does Google Bot React to Infinite Scroll?
Paging pages in infinite scroll are often not visible to Google bot, especially when the “View More” button is implemented using JavaScript.
➡️ Result: Products on paging pages become “orphan pages” (pages without links), which Google dislikes.
➡️ Consequence: Your products remain unindexed, and the visibility of your offerings in organic search results declines 📉.
💡 Practical Example
I worked with a Magento store where infinite scroll “cut off” a large number of products from the Google index, even after switching to classic pagination:
- ✅ Google increased the number of indexed pages from 20k to 60k in just 15-20 days.
- ✅ Organic rankings tripled 🚀.
- ✅ Traffic and profit significantly increased 💰.
❌ Crawl Budget and Infinite Scroll
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages that the Google bot can visit on your site within a specific time period. This means that Google has a limited resource that it spends on crawling your site, so it’s important to make this process as easy as possible for it.
🛠 How Does Crawl Budget Work?
Every time the Google bot visits a page, it uses a portion of your crawl budget. Think of the crawl budget as the “energy” that the Google bot consumes while indexing your site. For example:
🔍 One visit to a URL = 0.10€ of energy
The more pages Google needs to visit, the more energy it consumes. For sites with inefficient structures (like infinite scroll), the Google bot uses significantly more crawl budget than necessary.
🛑 The Problem with Infinite Scroll and Crawl Budget
With infinite scroll:
❌ The Google bot has to invest more crawl requests to visit all products on pagination pages.
❌ This means higher energy consumption and costs for Google.
More crawl requests = higher energy consumption = higher costs for Google 💸.
💡 Remove infinite scroll, and Google will reward you.
By removing infinite scroll and switching to classic pagination:
- ✅ Google bot uses less crawl budget.
- ✅ Saving on 1000 URLs can result in up to 100€ less cost for Google!
➡️ Result? Google loves when we help it save, and in return, it rewards us with better rankings in search. 🏆
Good collaboration? Definitely! 😊
💡 Link Juice and Infinite Scroll?
Link Juice is the power that pages receive through backlinks. The more quality backlinks point to your site, the greater the amount of Link Juice, which contributes to better organic rankings of pages in search.
🔗 In most Magento stores, the majority of backlinks usually point to the Home Page.
➡️ This power is then distributed through internal linking to other pages on the site – products, categories, and other important URLs.
❌ Distributing Link Juice and Infinite Scroll
When you implement infinite scroll, you automatically reduce the amount of Link Juice that products on pagination pages receive. This is because you move the pagination further away from the Home Page (the source of Link Juice), and now more clicks are needed from the Home Page to reach the pagination. The further a product is located on the pagination, the less Link Juice it gets.
➡️ Result? Less Link Juice for products = weaker organic rankings.
This can be especially problematic in situations where users search for individual products more than categories, as is the case with mobile phone stores.
❗ Consequences:
- Reduced product visibility in search.
- Loss of organic traffic.
- Direct decline in store revenue, which threatens its primary purpose.
🛠 How to Safely Implement Infinite Scroll?
If you want to keep infinite scroll, make sure to follow these three points:
- 🔹 Hire an Magento SEO specialist to ensure visibility of all products for the Google bot.
- 🔹 Use a combination of: infinite scroll for users, but classic pagination for the Google bot.
- 🔹 Hide infinite scroll from the Google bot using technical solutions.
🚩 Infinite Scroll: Yes/No
Infinite scroll can look modern and useful, but without careful implementation, it can:
- ❌ Reduce the visibility of your products
- ❌ Damage your organic rankings
- ❌ Decrease traffic and profit for your store.
Therefore, be cautious when implementing infinite scroll in your Magento store.