Can a load-more category page still expose every product?

[ShopSearch]

Consider a category that initially displays 24 products and reveals the rest only after someone presses “load more.” The interface may work well for a shopper, but discovery needs a separate check.

Google's pagination guidance explains why crawlable links to subsequent pages matter: crawlers do not operate every button as a shopper would.

For this example, I would ask for a paginated URL for each batch and ordinary links connecting the sequence. The enhanced interface could still append products for users.

What would you include in the acceptance test before calling this category search-friendly?

[IndexLab]

Start on page one and follow the actual links to the last batch. Confirm that products appearing only near the end have usable product links and working destinations.

Then request a later page directly in a fresh session. It should show its own batch without requiring the visitor to have pressed buttons on earlier pages.

[CrawlDesk]

I would check the URLs and canonical tags too. Google recommends a distinct URL and self-canonical for each page in the sequence, rather than canonicalising every batch to page one.

Preserve the selected category when moving through batches, and check how empty or out-of-range pages respond. Those edge cases belong in the implementation review.

[ShopSearch]

My acceptance list would combine three perspectives: crawlable sequential links, direct access to each batch, and a usable enhanced interface.

A sitemap can help expose product URLs, but I would still test the category's own paths. That checks the shopping experience and the relationships between pages instead of assuming the sitemap fixes the navigation.