Google Search enables continuous scrolling on Mobile

Max Tomlinson
October 18, 2021

The tech giant will start to roll out the big change on mobile Search. What will the impact of continuous scrolling be on your business?

It’s an old joke in the SEO world: Where’s the best place to hide a dead body? The second page of Google Search.

Basically, if you weren’t ranking on the first page of the SERPs (search engine results page), you weren’t getting very many eyeballs on your page. But now that Google has announced that continuous scrolling is coming to mobile, what will change?

Just need the basics? Here’s our 30-second rundown of the update:

What? Google is making continuous scrolling available on mobile, so you’ll no longer have to click the “see more” button until several pages in.

Why? They’re looking to improve the search experience overall and making this change will enable users to look deeper for more information.

Will this affect me? Unless all your pages were ranking on the first SERPs page, yes. It will make it easier for people to get to your content that’s not quite ranking as high as you’d like.

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Want a bit more information on the impact on your business? Keep reading.

How will continuous scrolling benefit my website?

“While you can often find what you're looking for in the first few results, sometimes you want to keep looking. In fact, most people who want additional information tend to browse up to four pages of search results.”

Niru Anand Product Manager, Search at Google

Essentially, by enabling continuous scrolling people will have an easier time navigating through more content that they previously likely would not have. By creating a system that shows multiple pages worth of results before a user is prompted with a “see more” button, creates the sense of one long Page 1. While it won’t actually have an impact on your SEO, it will impact your visibility.

“This change can create the illusion that the user hasn’t left the first page of SERPs, leading to them discovering and potentially clicking on URLs they otherwise wouldn’t have,” commented Matthew Southern, for Search Engine Journal.

This has been a feature on Google image search for years now and will be getting rolled our to mobile users starting in the US this month.

About the author

Katarina, known among friends and colleagues as Nina, is passionate about marketing, branding, and copywriting. She hosts Optily Radio, the bi-weekly podcast on eCommerce marketing. Nina moved from California to Dublin, Ireland to undertake an MSc in Digital Marketing Strategy at Trinity Business School in 2018 and has stayed there (for the great weather ☔) ever since.

Katarina (Nina) WhiteB2B Content Marketing Manager at Optily