No more Goooooogle for you
As long as many of us can remember, Google Search has always only shown you a limited amount of results on its first page. To dig deeper, you’d have to switch to a second, third, fourth, or n-th page, which is something many of us probably rarely do. This behavior is slowly starting to change, with Google introducing continuous scrolling for search results on mobile in 2021. And now, the company is rolling out the same capability to search results on desktops.
Google stated on Twitter that it’s starting to roll out the continuously scrolling results to desktop users in the US today who use the search engine in English. The mechanism automatically loads the next page of search results below the ones that you’re initially seeing, stopping only once you reach six results pages. Then is the moment when you will have to manually load more pages.
While Google hasn’t explained the reasoning behind the change, it’s likely done to address recent criticism that the search engine feels less relevant, mostly packed with search-optimized websites that don’t always provide the best value to those looking for a topic. The scrolling mechanism will make it easier to find other, potentially more relevant results further down the pages, which might in turn help Google adjust its algorithms to show these more relevant results further at the top when many people click them.
When you open Google in your browser, the new continuous scrolling might not be active yet, even if you live in the US. That’s because Google is rolling out the change in stages, making sure that everything works alright for everyone. In fact, the company first started experimenting with continuous scrolling back in May 2022, as spotted by Brodie Clark Consulting on its Google features timeline. Before then, search results became continuously scrolling on mobile as early as October 2021.
