Google launches the continuous scroll from mobile: goodbye to SERPs divided by page?
Google has decided to eliminate the classic page layout in SERP, for the time being only from mobile, and launched a new feature called continuous scroll, which basically causes the continuous scrolling of results until the user finds the content that conquers it. And so, it risks becoming obsolete of the most cited jokes of SEO and digital marketing, the one that says that “the safest place to bury a corpse is the second page of Google”.
Google introduces continuous scrolling from mobile
This feature is announced by the Search Product Manager, Niru Anand: as part of the wider redesign of the search results page on mobile devices, designed to offer a more modern experience and easier to scan and navigate, the company has decided to make browsing in search results more fluid and intuitive with the introduction of continuous scrolling on mobile devices.
In practice, when the user reaches the bottom section of a search results page on his smartphone, the next set of results will be automatically loaded with the relevant information. To be precise, when people reach the bottom of the search results page, Google will automatically load the next page of results and the pages will be automatically loaded until they reach about four pages of results (and thus, up to about 40 results loads continuously). It is therefore not exactly an infinity scroll, because after these first 40 results appears the “Show more” button that allows you to continue in depth and to show other pages positioned.
How the continuous scrolling of Google SERPs work
This new research experience debuted in mid-October “for most searches in English on mobile devices in the United States“, and should be implemented in other countries and languages next year.
According to Anand, although users usually find what they’re looking for in the first results, they sometimes want to “keep searching” and “most people who want more information tend to browse up to four pages of search results”. With this update, people can now do it without problems, browsing many different results before the block (with the ability to continue to scroll).
In the case example shown in this video, which concerns a wide and open query like “What can I do with pumpkins?” , the user might “consider more results and inspirations before deciding how to move forward”. The possibility of scrolling a wider range of results could provide a greater number of options than had not considered, “as ideas to decorate the pumpkin for Halloween without carving it, recipes with pumpkin seeds that repay the carving and other ideas on how to get the most out of your pumpkin”.
Google continuous scroll, what changes for ADS
The change will be implemented in the next two weeks, as revealed by Mohamed Farid, Product Manager of Google Ads, who also reassured that the continuous scroll “does not affect the functioning of the ad auction or the way the ad ranking is calculated”, although there may be changes in metrics.
A change will certainly affect the queries that generate ads at the top and bottom of the page: in principle, Google systems “recalculate the ad ranking for each page of search results to ensure that the most relevant and useful ads are displayed at the top”, and view the new feature are “redistributing the number of text ads that can be viewed between the top and bottom of pages for mobile queries in American English”. In practice, “textual ads can now be displayed at the top of the second page and beyond, while at the bottom of each page fewer text ads will be displayed”while there are no changes to the display mode of Shopping and Local ads.
Furthermore, there is the possibility that ads are displayed multiple times for a single query – although Faird says that, depending on the ranking, ads have always been eligible to “appear on a search results page and again on a subsequent page”; however, Google Ad systems assess whether the ad was shown on a previous page when calculating the ad ranking for each page.
Lastly, it is possible that there is some change in the metrics related to ADS, because “Search, Shopping and Local campaigns that publish ads on queries in American English could display more impressions on mobile devices, resulting in reduction of the CTR“, but “Clicks, conversions, average CPC and average CPA should remain unchanged”. In addition, Search campaigns may display more impressions from the top ads and less impressions from the bottom ads.
Google continuous scroll, implications for the SEO
The farewell to the second page of Google (and to the third and fourth, apparently) could also bring effects to the SEO, in particular on the estimates of organic traffic and the actual value of organic ranking.
To change, in all probability, will be first of all the curve of the clicks and the SEO CTR, because now the SERP will be more fluid and there will be precisely less distinctions between the pages – and therefore there could be positive effects for the results placed in second or third page, benefited by the loss of perception of the page change and the ease of scroll operation.
This also means that there will be more competition between the pages positioned, and to make the difference in conquering the user click will be primarily the preview snippets – title and meta description, on which in recent times has focused the attention of Google, also with a new document/guide – and also visual aspects. As you see in the video example, in fact, there will be a greater weight for images and multimedia resources, which will serve as perhaps never before to intercept the interest of people.
Even SEO tools will have to adapt to this novelty, because it will no longer be enough to indicate the ranking of a result, but it will also serve to inform about its actual location on the user’s continuous page: we can give a preview and say that the new version of SEOZoom is already ahead of its time, because it will show just this type of information with lots of indication of the position occupied by the results in pixels and the results that appear only after a scroll.
Liquid Google and SERPs turning into feeds
As Giorgio Taverniti pointed out, the farewell to SERP fulfills the expression liquid Google and makes the pages of the search engine a sort of continuous feed, similar to that of social media or Discover, speaking of Big G.
In addition to representing a change to the user experience, this functionality could also lead to the emergence of three elements that impact on our SEO activity:
- Increased advertising, which could also hide among organic results.
- Subtopics increment – seemingly “out of context” results, as can happen in a feed
- Greater weight of visual content, which will be increasingly decisive to attract the attention of readers and convince them to click (as is already the case for images on Google Discover).
According to Taverniti, this may be the time to evolve the SEO work by loosening from the old keyword concepts to focus rather “on the entities, on the relations between the related entities, on the needs expressed by the users around the entity, on the conceptual map of our entity and on the contents that then constitute our resource that can satisfy the needs of the users starting from the entity”.
