Fix lazy-loaded content

Deferring loading of non-critical or non-visible content, also commonly known as "lazy-loading", is a common performance and UX best practice. For more information, see the guide for lazy-loading images and video. However, if not implemented correctly, this technique can inadvertently hide content from Google. This document explains how to make sure Google can crawl and index lazy-loaded content.

Load content when it's visible in the viewport

To ensure that Google sees all content on your page, make sure that your lazy-loading implementation loads all relevant content whenever it is visible in the viewport. Here are a few examples on how you can do this:

Don't add lazy-loading to content that is likely to be immediately visible when a user opens a page. That might cause content to take longer to load and show up in the browser, which will be very noticeable to the user.

Make sure to test your implementation.

Support paginated loading for infinite scroll

If you are implementing an infinite scroll experience, make sure to support paginated loading. Paginated loading is important for users because it allows them to share and reengage with your content. It also allows Google to show a link to a specific point in the content, rather than the top of an infinite scrolling page.

To support paginated loading, provide a unique link to each section that users can share and load directly. We recommend using the History API to update the URL when the content is loaded dynamically.

Test

After you set up your implementation, make sure it works correctly. One way you do this is by using a Puppeteer script to locally test your implementation. Puppeteer is a Node.js library for controlling headless Chrome. To run the script, you'll need Node.js. Use the following commands to check out the script and run it:

git clone https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/puppeteer-examples
cd puppeteer-examples
npm i
node lazyimages_without_scroll_events.js -h

After running the script, manually review the screenshot images that it created to make sure they contain all the content you expect to be visible and indexed by Google.

You can also use the URL inspection tool in Search Console to see if all images were loaded. Check the screenshot and the rendered HTML to make sure your images are loaded.