Google dropping continuous scroll in search results
Google Search will stop its continuous scroll user experience where Google loads more results as you scroll past the first page of the search results. Instead, you will see see the classic and old pagination bar at the footer of the Google Search results.
Desktop first. Starting today, Google will start to turn off continuous scroll for the desktop Google Search results.
Google launched continuous scroll on desktop search in December 2022 and first in mobile search in October 2021. So continuous scroll only lasted about a year and a half for desktop search.
Google will remove continuous scroll from the mobile search results in the coming month.
What Google said. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that today, June 25, removing the ability to continuously scroll on desktop Search results, followed by mobile in the coming months.
The “Next” at the bottom of the page will show on desktop search and the “More results” button will show on mobile search.
Google said this change is to allow the search company to serve the search results faster on more searches, instead of automatically loading results that users haven’t explicitly requested. Google also told us that it found that loading more results automatically didn’t lead to significantly higher satisfaction with Google Search.
What continuous scroll looks like on desktop. Here is a GIF of continues scroll in action on desktop search:
What the pagination bar looks like. Here is what the bottom of the page one Google Search results look like on desktop with the classic and old pagination bar:
Why we care. If you were on page two, you may see less clicks to your website. It all depends on if those searchers scroll and now click to the next page. Also this may impact your Search Console data because searchers may scroll more or less versus click the “Next” button.