Goooooooooogle is back, Goodbye Continuous Scroll
It’s not been seen for a few years … Goooooooooogle. But, as of 25th June 2024, desktop users have found the old set of pagination links at the foot of their Google search results. Mobile users should be seeing something similar soon.
So What Has Changed?
Google has removed the continuous scroll from it’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) so that, to see the next set of search results, a user must click the Next link or the a number in the pagination widget.
So What Does That Mean?
Well, it means there are many fewer search results on page one of Google for starters. When an SEO company boasts they can get your site onto the first page of Google, that promise has just become a lot harder to fulfil. You may notice your middle-ranking search pages start receiving significantly less traffic than they did – we have.
So Why is Goooooooooogle back?
According to Google, removing continuous scroll has been motivated by the need to deliver search results more swiftly and efficiently. Google assert that, while continuous scrolling offered convenience, it did not markedly improve user experience. We’d assert that convenience is a vital part of user experience … but hey ho, we’re not Google.
Again, Google argues that by bringing back the “Next” button on desktop and the “More Results” button on mobile, it aims to streamline the search process and enhance the overall user experience. Our experience suggests that more buttons and more clicks offer significant friction to user experience and higher browse abandonment … but hey ho, we’re not Google.
It seems to us mosy likely that this is all about speed. Google is introducing Search Generative Experience (SGE) and other AI-based technologies. Artificial Intelligence is many things, but fast is rarely one of them. Google prizes speed above almost everything else. It looks as if they are simplifying the render of the results page in order to regain speed lost elsewhere on the page.
You Get Less Than You Used To
Pagination is not new. Google only introduced continuous scrolling in Autumn 2021. But back then, the search results page was simpler. The organic search results were, by and large, the most prominent feature on the page (as opposed to sponsored links and other paraphernalia).
Take a look at this page, captured today for the search term “angle grinder”.
Organic search results, those generated from the search engine’s own algorithms, have long been considered the best-quality, most trusted and, thus, the most sought-after results. Most SEO companies will devote most of their time and effort to ensuring the performance of pages as organic results. However, as the above demonstrates, the organic results are now dwarfed by other content on the screen.
The page itself is desperately hard to navigate: the second text-based organic search result doesn’t even appear on the screen of a large studio monitor.
To add insult to injury, there used to be ten search results on the page, now there are 9. That’s a 10% reduction in the content you actually asked to see!
Granted, “angle grinder” is a consumer product and people might wish to buy one off the search. But that is a might. There’s a separate tab for shopping.
It’s hard not to conclude that the Google page one is a much more hostile environment than it used to be. It’s clearly apparent that making an appearance there has got a lot more difficult.
But is This a Bad Thing?
We’ve seen considerable cynicism about these latest changes. There is no doubt that the proportion of the Google SERP devoted to Google’s advertising business has got a lot greater and the search results, which made the platform so popular, far harder to find.
Ergo, it is reasonable to assume these results benefit Google more than they benefit web users at large.
But Google, to a degree, has always been curated. The search algorithm itself is a form of curation and most SEO a process of gaming it. Google has hate speech policies that exclude content that promotes hatred, violence and attacks against groups of race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religious beliefs, disability or veteran status. You may agree with that policy (we do), but you cannot escape the fact that this is an editorial decision.
Alphabet is a publisher, and Google is its publication. If it ever was, Google is no longer an objective means of mining the web for information. But there’s a great deal of misinformation out there and a lot of uncouth content – an editorial process is no bad thing. Further, Alphabet is a commercial outfit; its flagship enterprise needs to sell advertising space to keep the show on the road.
Like any publication, though, it is wise to ask yourself: “It is telling the truth? Is it reporting accurately?” If one looks at any other publication ever, the best one can hope for is ‘most of the time’.