Google Search brings continuous scrolling to desktop

Google’s search results on desktop will load in a continuous scroll instead of dividing into pages, the company has announced. The move follows a similar change made on mobile in October last year, but isn’t quite an “infinite” scroll. Instead, Google will load six pages of results into a single scroll before offering users a “See more” button to show more results. 

Google says the change is rolling out first for English searches in the US, but judging by the rollout of the feature on mobile it seems safe to expect to see additional markets and languages added over time. 

The change mirrors the design of most social media feeds, where new content is continuously loaded as you scroll down a page rather than asking users to click or tap for more posts. Ideally, it will make searching quicker, and should make it less important for websites to be on the first page of search results. Google previously said that “most people who want additional information” will typically “browse up to four pages of search results.” 

However, given the huge drop-off in clicks that reportedly occurs between the first couple of results and the rest of the first page, the fight to be the first site on the page is likely to be just as intense as ever.