Let's go back to the happy days of 2022, when Google last offered paginated search results At the end of that year, the technology giant replaced its pages with an endless scrolling method reminiscent of social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram

Reports of Google discontinuing continuous scrolling of search results began to spread this week following a report published on Search Engine Land

Initial reports indicated that the return of pagination would begin on June 25, but several different desktop browsers failed to produce search results with pagination

We contacted Google, which confirmed that as of June 25, the ability to continuously scroll through search results on desktop is no longer available Infinite scrolling on mobile will take place in the coming months However, Google said the change will not take effect immediately for all users This is a phased rollout that began on June 25

In a statement to Tom's Guide, a Google spokesperson said, "We are constantly improving the search experience Through testing, we have found that automatically loading more search results does not significantly increase satisfaction with search"

The spokesperson added, "We are always looking for ways to improve the search experience

According to Google, the way you return to the page will be similar to how you remember it circa 2022 Once you reach the bottom of the search results page, "the next page of search results will now only load when you click 'Next' at the bottom" Mobile users will see a separate "More Results" button

Page numbers have also returned with this change, making them more attractive to SEOs who pride themselves on getting to the first page Until the last 18 months or so, there was a constant battle among SEO professionals and websites to get their URLs to appear on the first page of Google searches This created an "appear on page one or don't appear on page one" mentality

Continuous scrolling was intended to combat this, but many users did not like this feature It has now been modified to provide results faster instead of automatically loading results that the user has not requested

With all the changes that search has seen in the last couple of years, including the addition of AI overviews to search results and the subsequent slight rollback, seeing how the return of pagination will affect websites in the future will be an indication of user reaction to Google's continued machinations will be a sign of user response to Google's ongoing machinations