Google only indexing the top 2/3 of my page?

[yandl]

HI,

I have a page that is about 5000 lines of code total. I was having difficulty figuring out why the addition of a lot of targeted, quality content to the bottom of the pages was not helping with rankings. Then, when fetching as Google, I noticed that only about 3300 lines were getting indexed for some reason.

So naturally, that content wasn't going to have any effect if Google in not seeing it. Has anyone seen this before? Thoughts on what may be happening? I'm not seeing any errors begin thrown by the page....and I'm not aware of a limit of lines of code Google will crawl. Pages load under 5 seconds so loading speed shouldn't be the issue.

Thanks, Kevin

[mgreeves]

Do we know if a quick copy paste from the lower 1/3 of the page into Google returned the page (and copied text) in question? Or, have you ever seen a case where the top portion is findable in the SERPs through a quick copy/paste of a portion of text, but text from the bottom doesn't return anything?

I've seen this happen, and don't really have a good answer for it. Seems like it could be along the same lines? I know Google can't index a portion of the page, but strange how when you copy a sentence from the top of a page with tons of lines of code, you can find it in the SERPs, but doing the same from the bottom yielded nothing.

[LoganRay]

The OP was saying that Fetch/Render was only showing 2/3 of his page, he did confuse that with indexing, which is also why I'm trying to clarify this difference. Indexing partial content is not a thing, seeing partial content in Fetch/Render is a thing.

There is no content (as in on-page content) in SERPs, only a title tag, URL, and meta description. It's literally impossible for Google to index a portion of a page, because that content is what's on the URL. You click that link, and it's out of their control.

[LoganRay]

James,

Search Console's Fetch and Render tool is much different than indexing, it's simply a representation of how Google sees your page. Long-form content is not required for good rankings when the intent of the searcher justifies, I've seen plenty of top ranked pages with shorter content, especially on ecommerce sites.

[LoganRay]

Hi Kevin,

I noticed your site is very image-heavy (if we're talking about your agency's site). It's common to see this in the Fetch and Render tool, especially on pages with a lot of images. Anytime I run a F&R on an ecommerce site's product listing page, the images stop loading at a certain point. I wouldn't worry too much about it, it doesn't mean they're not indexing it (they can't index a portion of a URL), it just means they're not using resources to show you everything they see.

There's a problem with your strategy that you highlighted when you said "quality content to the bottom of the pages was not helping with rankings". If you're putting content in the bottom of pages simply for ranking purposes, your SEO strategy needs a second look. Content needs to be written for people, and in order for it to be useful to people, you need to not bury it in the bottom of a page. Google weighs content differently based on its location, if you put something at the bottom of the page, on a hidden tab, or behind an accordion, it's not going to be nearly as helpful for ranking boosts.

Hope that helps answer your question.