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Can Google deal with Lazy Load?

We’ve said it time and again: site speed is a crucial aspect of your SEO. That’s why we often write about site speed tools, speed optimization, and other things you need to know to make your site lightning fast. One factor in site speed is image optimization: on most sites, images will play a part in loading times. So, giving your image SEO some thought will pay off.

Besides resizing and compressing your images to improve loading times, there’s the option to implement ‘lazy loading’ on your site. Lazy loading means that an image or object on your site doesn’t load until it appears in your visitor’s browser. For example: if a page has 8 images, only those that appear ‘above the fold’ load right away, while the others load as the user scrolls down. This can significantly improve speed, especially on pages that contain a lot of images. There are several plugins you can use to add lazy loading to your WordPress site. But is there really no catch? Will Google still index all your images?

MaAnna emailed us, wondering exactly that:

I’m testing the lazy load image function in WP Rocket. In online testers like WebPage Test, the waterfall doesn’t show the images loading, but when I do a Fetch and Render in Google Search Console all images on a page are shown. Can Google deal with lazy load and still index our images, as Fetch and Render seems to indicate?

Watch the video or read the transcript for the answer!

Can Google deal with Lazy Load?

“Yes, it can. It renders the page, it waits a bit and it scrolls down the page a bit to generate all the events that it needs to generate to make sure that it has loaded the entire page.

So yes, it can deal with that. You’re very fine using something like that lazy load image function. Google actually has code itself as well, in which it promotes the lazy loading of images because it really enhances people’s experience because pages get faster using lazy load. So, by all means, do use it. Use it well. Good luck!”

Read more: Does site speed influence SEO? »

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7 Responses to Can Google deal with Lazy Load?

  1. https://en.gravatar.com/
    https://en.gravatar.com/  • 6 years ago

    Hiya! Quick question that’s completely off topic.
    Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My site looks weird when viewing
    from my iphone4. I’m trying to find a theme or plugin that might be able to fix this
    issue. If you have any suggestions, please share. Appreciate it!

  2. Rashiduzzaman
    Rashiduzzaman  • 6 years ago

    But What is the best Lazyload plugins (company name)?

  3. scalpelalivedinos
    scalpelalivedinos  • 6 years ago

    Is there any lazy load plugins recommend?
    Thanks in advance

  4. انجام پروژه متلب
    انجام پروژه متلب  • 6 years ago

    lazy load for googlebots is a cloaking.
    https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en

  5. Pradeep Singh
    Pradeep Singh  • 6 years ago

    Hey Yoast,
    Today My doubt is clear I was also used lazy load feature, but for this reason, I disabled Now I can integrate this feature happily
    Thanks

  6. wasim akram
    wasim akram  • 6 years ago

    I am already using lazy load in my wordpress blog along with yoast seo. Both plugins are amazing. But i was consfused that should I use lazy load? tThen thanks for today becasue I got answer to my question. I will keep using it.

  7. Mircea G.
    Mircea G.  • 6 years ago

    Got it, thanks for the clarification! I’m having the same problem with lazy loading provided by Jetpack. (shows only a “gif”)


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