Google is making a noticeable change to Search on the desktop and on mobile devices

According to Search Engine Land (via The Verge), Google is about to do one of the most Googley things possible to the continuous scrolling feature found on Google Search results both on the desktop and mobile devices. Starting today, Google has removed users' ability to continuously scroll through desktop Search results. Later this month, it will do the same thing and end infinite scrolling on mobile Search results.

Instead of continuous scrolling for Search results on the desktop, users will press a button that says "Next" at the bottom of the page to see more results. On mobile, the infinite scrolling will be replaced by a "More results" button. Google actually has a reason for making this change instead of dropping a feature for no reason at all, something that the company has often been accused of doing.

Google claims that by making this change, it will be able to deliver more search results faster instead of automatically loading search results that users haven't requested and have no interest in seeing. Google also discovered that allowing infinite scrolling of search results didn't result in higher satisfaction scores for Google Search. Continuous scrolling debuted on the desktop in December 2022 after starting on mobile search in October 2021.

If you own a website and your site doesn't appear on the first page of a search result, you now might see fewer visitors from Google Search since a user would have to make the decision to press the "Next" button on the desktop or the "More results" button on a phone to continue to see additional results beyond the first page. Or, desktop users can jump to a specific page using Google's iconic pagination controls which allows a user to jump to pages one through 10 by tapping on the page number desired.

I have yet to notice any change to the desktop version of Google Search which continues to scroll continuously. As we said, the mobile version of Search is supposed to be updated before June comes to an end.