After its debut on mobile devices in October 2021, Google announces it is bringing the continuous scroll feature to desktop Search results, as it hopes that users will be able to see more helpful search results with fewer clicks.
The company tweeted this, via its @Google handle on Twitter yesterday, noting that continuous scrolling to desktop will first be rolled out to users who speak English language in the United States.
Traditionally, search results have only shown 10 blue links, even though up to 100 results have been displayed every page from google.com/preferences.
Google says “you’ll now be able to see up to six pages of results” on getting to the bottom of a search results page, which is marked by a loading indicator and presumably faster than finding and clicking “Next.”
As a convenience feature, it echoes the feed-based nature of a wide range of modern websites; nonetheless, this style of interface is more typical of mobile apps than for desktop platforms.
Google is also planning to add more Search box suggestions on mobile and richer layouts for key results. The desktop equivalent has yet to be detailed. It’s also slowly testing a new design for Search filters, via 9to5Google.
Unlike most assumptions, the Continous scroll feature may seem like infinite scroll but it does not go on infinitely. It stops after scrolling to a few pages (six actually) – which is why the Tech Giant calls it continuous scroll instead of infinite scroll.
Google, in its announcement, shared the GIF image below to explain what the continuous scroll looks like on desktop search;
By default, Google displays search results in a “paged” format. That implies that before this update, users who wanted to see more results after scrolling down the search results page had to click on the page number at the bottom of the page.
Websites that did not otherwise receive enough traffic to appear on the first page of search results may benefit from this new feature.
