Google has recently announced a new continuous scroll feature that should bring some changes to the search, to improve the user experience.
Let’s discover together in this article the advantages of a continuous scroll and its impact on your SEO.
What is continuous scrolling on Google?
From now on, it will no longer be necessary to click on the “See More” button to view the results on page 2. This change will only apply to mobile devices and will be available for queries in the US in English. It will only apply to the first four pages.
Why four pages? According to Google, the majority of users who want additional information tend to scroll up to four pages of the search results. With continuous scrolling, this will be done seamlessly.
Beginning today, continuous scrolling is starting to roll out to Google Search for most English searches on mobile devices in the US. Learn more: https://t.co/ulPL0EaKV0 pic.twitter.com/W0iwL3fdy6
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 14, 2021
What impact on your SEO?
Google says that this new feature should give users more choices, especially when running very generic searches (for ex. “What can I do with pumpkins?). We can therefore expect a shift from page 1 to the next results. We may see a lower bounce rate on the SERPs, and a higher number of results viewed per session since Google now values the discovery of new results. The impact should be minor, if not imperceptible, for SEOs.
The impact on impressions reporting in Google Search Console
It’s still too early to speculate on the impact this will have, but there are good reasons to believe that it will increase mobile impressions for pages currently ranked as low as 11th, as users will no longer need to click through to the second page of results. This means that the click-through rate could see a corresponding drop since CTR is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions.
As far as reporting on your mobile performance, this change should not affect position reports in Search Console or other ranking tracking tools that focus on position. Tracking tools that focus on page count will be affected, but Google says they don’t report on that metric.
Do you want to implement an effective mobile marketing strategy to achieve your business goals?
What changes to your Ad Rank?
Google’s systems are recalculating the ad rank for each page of search results, to ensure that the most relevant and useful ads are still displayed at the top of the page.
Along with this change in the display of search results, Google says it is redistributing the number of text ads that can be displayed between the top and bottom of pages for English mobile queries.
Find out in this article what the new design of the Google Search Console is about and why you should start using it.
From now on, text ads will appear at the top of the second page and beyond, while fewer text ads will appear at the bottom of each page. This will not affect the way Shopping and Local ads will be displayed.
Finally, Google recommends monitoring your campaigns and continuing to optimize them to reach your business goals. This change in mobile search results is expected to roll out to other countries and languages in 2022. Eminence will keep you informed of any further evolution.