Google Continuous Scroll doesn’t have an effect on Search Console reviews

As you know, Google is rolling out continuous scrolling in mobile search. To be honest, I covered both the Search Console image and the Google Ads reports in my original coverage on this topic. I said there is no direct impact outside of changing user behavior. However, it seems some are still wondering how this change will affect the performance reports in Search Console.

They really don’t affect them directly. The following was in my original reporting:

Continuous scrolling does not change how the position reports in Search Console work. The position reports remain as if pages did not load automatically.

– Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 14, 2021

Google’s John Mueller added:

Nothing changes for the Search Console – position is position. We don’t follow any pages there.

I have no idea what third-party rank trackers are doing here – they usually work outside of our Terms of Service anyway.

– 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) October 14, 2021

and…

My understanding is (I didn’t have time to test, still caught up from a week) that we are still loading the results in groups of about 10. Although it looks more like a single page, it’s still roughly “10 / page”. “.

– 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) October 18, 2021

Here’s a recent tweet from John about it:

AFAIK is still loading (in the background) in batches of around 10 so there will be some “pagination” even if it is more transparent. I suspect this will increase the number of impressions (it’s easier to see more results) and keep the clicks stable. So if you just look at the CTR, you’ll see subtle changes.

– 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) October 21, 2021

He also talked about it in his most recent video meeting place at 46:57 mark where he said:

But essentially from our side we’re still loading the search results in groups of 10, essentially. And when a user scrolls down the page, we dynamically load the next set of 10 results there. And when that set of 10 results is loaded, it counts as an impression. That basically means that this kind of scrolling down and you start to see page two of the search results that we would see, well, that’s now page two.

And it now has impressions, similar to when someone clicks directly on the links on page two. From this point of view, not much has changed.

What I think will change a bit is that users will likely scroll to page two, page three, or four a little easier. And based on that, the number of impressions a website can get in search results is likely to increase somewhat. I don’t think it’s going to be an extreme change, but it’s more likely that if you rank on page two, your website will suddenly get a lot more impressions just because it’s easier to get to page two of the search results. And the number of clicks I suspect will stay the same because people are sort of scrolling up and down and looking at the results on a page. And they will click on one of them. So what is likely to happen is that the impressions increase a little. Clicks stay the same. That means your click-through rate tends to drop a bit. And if you are only focusing on the CTR for SEO then I suspect this is going to be a bit of an odd situation as it is hard to determine the CTR? delete because this page was displayed with continuous scrolling in this environment? Or did it fall because users saw it but didn’t like clicking it anymore? I find that pretty difficult. One thing that I don’t know helps a little I think is that we’re only doing this continuous scrolling for the first four pages. And then you click on the loading type more or on the next page. I don’t know what it’s called exactly. So it’s not something you would see if you ranked on page five or six, at least not right now.

Here is the video:

So no direct reporting changes as page two is still page two. However, as searchers tend to scroll more and click results from page two, your CTR may change. Maybe…

Forum discussion at Twitter.