It turns out that not every change is good. Even before the vacations, we learned that Google had decided to roll back the continuous scrolling feature of search results, known as “endless scrolling.” The corporation introduced it gradually from 2021 on mobile devices, and on desktop we saw the first tests in 2022. We also wrote about it on our blog. Something that was supposed to elevate Google’s revenues didn’t quite live up to its intentions. Therefore, many users may already be surprised by the return of the pagination system.
Reasons for Google’s decision
The decision marks a return to the classic page-by-page breakdown of results, which was intended to increase the speed of the search engine and improve the user experience. According to Google’s observations, the function of automatically loading more results has not brought the expected benefits, such as higher user satisfaction. It could be argued that Google has not adequately researched the needs of its users, which is strongly surprising given how much they spend on research. We have also heard claims that the feature was meant to be a carbon copy of the solutions used in social networks, namely the ‘eternal scrolling’ option. While it might seem that “infinite scroll” works perfectly on mobile devices, in practice users have had problems with the smoothness and responsiveness of the feature. Paging is more stable, which is especially important on older mobile devices and with weaker internet connections.
Eternal change
For many, this change is a return to a more familiar and intuitive way of using Google search. The return to pagination gives users the ability to manually navigate between pages of results. This change has already been implemented on computers, and is slowly being rolled out on mobile devices as well. The very fact that the new feature was immediately disabled is testament to the acknowledgment of the error. However, some users are accustomed to the fluidity of single-page search, and for them, a longer time will probably be needed to adapt the new-old feature.
Pagination in SEM
Looking from the paid search campaign side, this is a return to the strategy we had in the days of pagination. There will again be limited spaces for paid positions on the first search page. This may cause slight modifications in both budget planning and optimization of advertising efforts. For SEO specialists, marketers and end users, this means new challenges, but also opportunities. Thus, we say goodbye to perpetual page scrolling and hello to the return of paging.
