Google has announced that infinite scrolling, which was introduced in October 2021 on mobile and in December 2022 on desktop, will be gradually retired. This decision marks a return to a more traditional pagination. According to a spokesperson for the company, this transition began on June 25 for desktop versions, and will be extended to mobile in the coming months. Users will therefore find the classic encrypted pagination with a “Next” button on desktop and “More results” on mobile.
Good old encrypted pagination
This change aims to provide search results “ faster for more searches », avoiding automatically loading results not explicitly requested by Internet users. Google also pointed out that automatic loading of results did not lead to greater user satisfaction.
A Google spokesperson explained to the site: Search Engine Land : « We found that auto-loading results did not lead to significantly higher satisfaction with Google Search. This change will allow us to provide faster search results for more searches. »
For most users, this change should not have a significant impact on their browsing experience. People typically settle for the results that appear first on their screen, whether they are on a computer or a smartphone. However, this change could have implications for websites that appear beyond the first page of search results.
With infinite scrolling, these sites had a chance of being discovered by users who scrolled through the results. By returning to traditional pagination, these same sites risk seeing their visibility decrease. The second page of search results could become even less visited than before, reducing the chances of these sites attracting clicks.
The end of infinite scrolling could also modify the data observed in Search Console, Google’s analysis tool for webmasters. Users’ browsing behavior (number of pages viewed, interactions with search results, etc.) could change.
This return to traditional pagination is presented as a technical adjustment to improve search performance… but it nonetheless could have significant implications for less well-referenced websites.
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