Google’s desktop search results load continuously instead of being broken into pages. the company announced. The move follows a similar change made to mobile last October, but isn’t quite an “infinite” scroll. Instead, Google loads six pages of results in a single scroll before offering users a “See more” button to display more results.
Google says the change is rolling out first for English searches in the US, but judging by the feature’s rollout on mobile, it seems safe to expect additional markets and languages to be added over time.
The change is consistent with the design of most social media feeds, where new content is continuously loaded as you scroll down a page rather than prompting users to click or tap for more posts. Ideally, searches will be faster and it should be less important for websites to be on the first page of search results. Google previously said that “most people wanting additional information” typically “scroll through four pages of search results.”
Given the massive drop-off in clicks that reportedly takes place between the first few results and the rest of the first page, the battle to be the first site on the page is likely to be as intense as ever.