Lazy loading comments and opinions

[piernik]

I have travel website with descriptions of towns and attractions. Below my article (often 10000+ chars) I have a section where every user can write its comments and rate this attraction. I wonder if it is better to lazy load this section on scroll.
Pros:
1. Less HTML code = better text 2 html ratio
2. Faster loading times

Cons:
1. With normally visible comment block I'm also using scrip snippet Review. It will be gone and maybe it is good for Google. I would leave "AggregateRating" snippet
2. No more extra paragraphs with user comments.

[RedBar]

For about the first 15 years of The Net I used to try and have a maximum 100K page weight and then when broadband became very mainstream and then smartphones, I discarded that limit and added more optimised images and videos since it was very evident that Google itself did not care one iota about page weights and loading times.

Are you serving millions of pages whereby your suggestion may make a difference to your allowed bandwidth since I never get anywhere close to mine?

Faster loading times are all subject to many different things such as access, device, compatibility etc and as a thought for you, my most viewed pages are those with the most text, images and videos!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

For comments, you can keep full site functionality while removing comment load entirely if you use a 3rd party comment system like Discus.

The features available are numerous, you may be able to get the Pros without the Cons.

A bonus pro is that you can make your page entirely static(fast) and the comment system will still work, if you're concerned about site speed.

[londrum]

i wouldnt remove the comments from the HTML if theyve been there a long time because you could lose a load of long tail rankings.
if you want to hide the majority of them from the user then you could just do a <div> reveal with CSS and javascript, behind a ‘show comments’ link, or something
one thing ive learned over the years is making big changes to old pages invariably backfires because google seems to reevaluate them and you end up losing out
the only reason i'd remove them are if the comments are low quality, or off-topic

[tangor]

The matter of UGC remains a consideration. If there is a jury still out on that they are probably still on vacation.

G largely nixed UGC years ago, and from time to time used it to pummel websites.

Just a thought.

Pay heed to Sgt Kickaxe.

[piernik]

What's UGC?

[engine]

What's UGC?

User Generated Content

[buckworks]

>> What's UGC?

User Generated Content

[martinibuster]

The specifications for Lazy Load [developer.mozilla.org] do not allow for adding it to a div.

It applies to images and iframes.

Don't worry about Text to Code ratio because text to code ratio does not matter.

Back in the early days of the web it was discovered that a high text to code ratio tended to correlate with spam sites. But Google has said many times that text to code ratio is not something that could negatively affect a site.

It may be possible to use a JavaScript listener to detect when a div is in the viewport and load it at that point. [javascripttutorial.net]

But I haven't tried it so I'm not sure what effect it may have on page load time, which if it works, may help your core web vitals.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Don't worry about Text to Code ratio because text to code ratio does not matter.

It hasn't in years. I remember someone from G discussing this 6 or 7 years ago(Matt Cutts?) and saying that some content management systems and apps created all kinds of extra code and so it wasn't a good signal for ranking purposes. "Worry about what users can see" was the conclusion.

It may be possible to use a JavaScript listener to detect when a div is in the viewport and load it at that point. [javascripttutorial.net]

If you use listeners, services like lighthouse recommend.using passive listeners where possible for performance reasons, not active ones. - [web.dev...]

If you're going to lazy load 3rd party content it's recommended you also use facades - [web.dev...]

A facade is a static element which looks similar to the actual embedded third-party, but is not functional and therefore much less taxing on the page load.

The facade image will trigger image optimization checks and using the latest image type recommendations. Round and round we go.

If your site relies on user generated content for rankings it becomes fodder for savy SEOs who know they can outrank virtually any forum page. This is true for all websites but spotting a top ranking forum makes some SEOs especially interested. It's easy to do with all the ranking metrics reporting services available today.

Some 3rd party comment systems give you the option of letting Google index the UGC or not. Remember, the comments aren't on your domain with 3rd party services so how the 3rd party service includes the comments on your page matters. This is perhaps easier than using event listeners, lazy load etc.

I'm not saying don't do what you mentioned doing, but do look at other successful sites that have done what you're planning before you jump in. It's not trivial, success is very dependent on implementation(incl code AND moderation) when it comes to UGC.

Good luck!

edit: I felt OLD writing this, I remember a time when every product had a fan forum. There's a reason that's not the case anymore. UGC is HARD to rely on for good rankinigs, it used to be easy(ish)