info [ AT ] redcardinal [ DOT ] ie
Reading between the lines can be dangerous:
"Determine how much content to include on each page.
* Be sure that if a searcher came directly to this page, they could easily find the exact item they wanted (e.g., without lots of scrolling before locating the desired content).
* Maintain reasonable page load time."
[bolding added]
IMO that's a strange statement…
Embedded Link
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Infinite scroll search-friendly recommendations
Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 6:45 AM. Webmaster Level: Advanced Your site’s news feed or pinboard might use infinite scroll—much to your users’ delight! When it comes to delighting Googlebot, however, that can be another story. With infinite scroll, crawlers cannot always emulate manual user …
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This post was first made on the Richard Hearne Google+ profile.
I don' t think it is strange, it is annoying if you've got to scroll through 15 pages of infinite scroll to find the thing of interest.
To me this is no different than frustrating users by having content sitting behind tabbed UI, someone lands on the page from search and can't find what they were looking for immediately as the content is sitting behind a tab – it's frustrating for users.
If I follow a link to a category page on pinterest about tattoos, I want to be able to find the images of interest relevant to the link.
Most people that implement infinite scrolling don't update the browser URL as you scroll down the page, so that if they shared a URL – they are actually sharing page 13 for example instead of the base category URL.
Checkout http://qz.com/ for what I'm talking about.
Comment by Alistair Lattimore — February 14, 2014 @ 5:46 am
Strangeness was more along the lines of whether this is part of their algo
Comment by Richard Hearne — February 14, 2014 @ 6:38 am
Mmmmm… Could be…
Don't forget that the Page Layout algo was updated a few days back, so the reference is doubtlessly aimed at more than just infinite scroll.
FWIW… I personally do not think that infinite scroll is really the way forward. I've found that it tends to confuse a great many visitors. Thoughts?
Comment by Sasch Mayer — February 14, 2014 @ 12:28 pm
Good for browsing, not for navigating. Also good for viewing very linear data like timelines. Otherwise it wouldn't be my favourite either TBH.
Comment by Richard Hearne — February 14, 2014 @ 12:30 pm
That's pretty much the way I see it too. I've seen too many e-commerce sites get so fixated on what a great thing infinite scroll is, that they never consider all the bolt-ons they'll need (comparators, wishlists, vertical bookmarks, whatnot) in order to actually turn the browsers into buyers without frustrating the crepe out of them.
Comment by Sasch Mayer — February 14, 2014 @ 12:36 pm