Lazy loading and SEO: where the defaults will hurt you.

Native lazy loading (`loading="lazy"`) on images is recommended by almost every performance guide. It's also a ranking factor landmine if applied carelessly.

Googlebot doesn't scroll pages. It renders the initial viewport, executes JavaScript, and captures the DOM. Images below the fold with `loading="lazy"` may never be loaded during Googlebot's rendering pass, meaning:
- Alt text on those images contributes nothing to relevance signals
- Product images in a grid below the fold are invisible to image search
- Content that appears only when images load (skeleton states, captions) may not be indexed

The safe rule: apply `loading="lazy"` only to images that are genuinely below the fold for the majority of devices. For hero images, first-product-row images, and any image that carries keyword-relevant alt text, use `loading="eager"` or no loading attribute at all.

Also: test with Google's Rich Results Test and compare what images appear in the Googlebot-rendered screenshot versus the live page. If there's a gap, you have an indexing problem.