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Ask HN: Has Google search switched to infinite scrolling for you too now?
It seems google search has changed to using infinite scrolling for me, an incredibly annoying change.
Has anyone else got it? Is there a way to get the old pagination back?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoYes, you can disable it. It's right there at the top of the Search Settings page. However, the selection of individual pages is gone, and replaced by a single "More results" arrow at the bottom of the page. So it does appear that they've gutted the functionality, and it's only continuous scrolling whether you choose manual or automatic style.
- KomoD 3y agoUgh :( I really liked having individual pages
- nomilk 3y agoOut of interest, why? I find infinite scroll a pareto improvement (an improvement with no downsides)
- darkerside 3y agoIt does ruin the back button
- fastball 3y agoI can't really speak to the benefit for a search engine, but for our app we opted to keep actual pages because it allows users to remember approximately where some content is and go directly to that page.
- KomoD 3y agoBecause I can skip tons of pages, I can go back to the same page later.
- crazygringo 3y agoWhy would you ever skip a page of search results?
- spectre3d 3y agoIf you are using the exact same search terms you have used dozens of times, then you likely know what the first few pages of results are, and may want to skip to where you previously left off in your search.
- robinsonb5 3y agoOn mobile it might be. On Desktop it (1) devalues the scrollbar, since you can no longer use its size in proportion to its container to judge how large the page is compared with your view of it, and (2) adds jank while the next set of results is loaded (the pause while loading feels random rather than an expected event in response to your changing page). The other thing that's annoying me is the overriding of cursor keys, making each scrolling step much larger than it would normally be. Yes, it might be more logical for a keypress to step to the next result, but that's not how the cursor keys are expected to behave in the browser, so it's jarring.
- Severian 3y ago> On mobile it might be. On Desktop it (1) devalues the scrollbar, since you can no longer use its size in proportion to its container to judge how large the page is compared with your view of it, and (2) adds jank while the next set of results is loaded (the pause while loading feels random rather than an expected event in response to your changing page).The other thing that's annoying me is the overriding of cursor keys, making each scrolling step much larger than it would normally be. Yes, it might be more logical for a keypress to step to the next result, but that's not how the cursor keys are expected to behave in the browser, so it's jarring.
- furyofantares 3y agoHeh, a pareto improvement is "a new situation where some agents will gain, and no agents will lose" I get your meaning but it's kind of a funny phrase to mean "no downsides to this one agent, me"
- robin_reala 3y agoFor keyboard users it acts as a focus trap, breaking the expected interaction model of the page. You can’t ever reach the footer, at least until the results stop.
- madeofpalk 3y agoIs there a footer on infinite-scroll google?
- robin_reala 3y agoThere is. After 4-5 pages of loading Google gave up and showed me a “More search results” button with a footer below it, along with the legally required things like a link to the privacy policy. But who knows whether it’ll be 4-5 pages in the future? This is a common problem with infinite scroll websites, not just Google of course.
- hnick 3y agoOne example can be resources and efficiency. One time I was trying to browse Google Fonts to find something in a certain visual style (ie not something you can really search for via keywords). It made Chrome completely unresponsive after a little while. This was a few years back so maybe it’s better now, but I’ve seen similar slowdown on other sites. A more human reason is that personally, I like to portion out and chunk off parts as no longer requiring my attention. I read a page and move on, clear the mental cache and start again. Infinite scrolls can mess with my focus.
- guiambros 3y ago> However, the selection of individual pages is gone Are you logged in? I have disabled infinite scrolling, and I still have selection of individual pages. But if I open an incognito window and disable infinite scrolling, I get the same "More results" as you, so I'm wondering if it's related to being logged in or not.
- doix 3y agoA/B testing, I have different behaviour between my work Google account and personal account. Hadn't really noticed until this thread though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ttctciyf 3y agoA couple of weeks ago it stopped showing the search page numbers at the bottom for me, but didn't infinitely scroll. I went into settings and changed it to infinite scroll manually so I could get past the first page of results. Trying in a different browser profile, I didn't have the issue. I got used to infinite scrolling in my main profile.. and then it mysteriously went back to multi-page results with working numbered links all by itself. I haven't dared go back into settings to see if it's still set to infinite scroll (I assume not) because I don't want to break it any more. I'm used to things randomly breaking in youtube, in the play queue, for example, but I thought this was kind of a shocking level of breakage to find in an online behemoth's primary offering, especially given how essentially simple its presentation task is. Seems they might be still fiddling with it, though - searched the term slashdot and found "About 14,000,000 results (0.28 seconds)", but the bottom of the page only shows links to three pages of results, expanding to seven when I click "next". I wonder what they think they're doing? Probably too much remote working, I expect. That'll be it.
- yard2010 3y agoWDYM too much remote working?
- presbyterian 3y agoMine has infinite scroll, but not infinite scroll of results. At a certain point it switches to boxes of recommended articles based on what it considers similar searches, which are literally never useful to me
- kylecazar 3y agoSame, but there is an option for me above the recommended articles to see 'More search results', which loads another ten or so.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoI stopped using Google on mobile about a year ago as a result.
- Waterluvian 3y agoIt’s comical how they finally get around to infinite scroll after destroying the quality and quantity of the results. I very regularly get to the end of the results 20-30 in. I used to utilize the vaguely related deep-dive results, especially in image searches, to go on tours of nostalgia or just wandering. But Google can’t offer that anymore.
- gmerc 3y agowell infinite scroll allows you to monetize bad results. Bad results incentivize more scrolling allowing you more ad impression opportunity. It’s completely rational for them, their business model is no longer aligned with giving you the top result and people from past conditioning won’t go page 2 because they know nothing of value is there. So if you want more ad revenue shitty results and infinite scroll are a match made in heaven
- juujian 3y agoHasn't for me, and I don't seem to have the option to turn it on either.
- lemper 3y agonah, still got paging. I use Singaporean IP and on firefox on android.
- mindslight 3y agoInfinite scrolling needs to die in a fire. I'm sure it increases some fallacious "engagement" metric like time spent on the page or something, but it's an utterly horrible experience. Scroll down one and a half pages, watch a spinning circle as the next few results load, then watch the spinning circles as the result images load, repeat until you can't take it anymore and give up. On the whole this assertion of always-available javascript has basically destroyed the usability of the web as every small minded manager/designer thinks that inserting themselves in the way of the user makes for some endearing "experience". It doesn't.
- tester756 3y agoDespite all the hate Google and infinite scroll gets, it seems to be good decision doesn't it? You rarely go to even the second page, I'm almost always improving/changing the query instead of going to next pages, so even in those edge cases where I have to go to next pages, then auto loading next results when I'm at the bottom of the page seems viable solution Infinite scroll is annoying because e.g you cannot link to thing but that's not the case with Google - you do not link Google results to people, you send them the result itself - desired website.
- KomoD 3y ago> You rarely go to even the second page You might not, I do, I do a lot, I even go further. I personally don't like the change at all
- tester756 3y agoI'm curious - in what cases do you go even further?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- atlasunshrugged 3y agoI used to often do a minimum of 5 pages when I was doing any sort of serious research to start checking the more esoteric and less SEO optimized results. The infinite scroll has definitely been annoying for me
- PaulHoule 3y agoIn theory there might be more than ten interesting results on a topic, and with some search engines, say the one at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ there really are. For Google the results past the top ten have been unusable for a very long time, frequently just a repetition of the same garbage. Circa 2004 I was interested in the question of why Google was so much better than other search engines, which got me into reading TREC proceedings which made it clear that Google probably wouldn't do very well on TREC because the original TREC scores assumes you care about the relevance of the 1000th result and Google was all about "I'm feeling lucky". A month or so ago I was talking to someone developing a search engine who was concerned that most tracks in TREC now are concerned about precision @ 1, precision @ 5 and things like that and was wondering how to tune up a search engine if the 1000th result matters. I guess things go full circle.
- 1024core 3y agoInfinite scrolling means infinite ads... :-D
- renegat0x0 3y agoI really think that they may now sprinkle good results between worse ones just to show more ads, and force you to scroll, and scroll, and read more ads. Why to provide good results immediately if it is not a good business decision? They need to balance good and bad results to not anger consumers too much and to get target revenue
- elzbardico 3y agoGoogle pruned their index so radically that it doesn't make a difference anymore. For a bit less common stuff, but yet nothing esoteric, I get to the last page around page 4 or 5. And most of the stuff on those 5 pages are mostly SEO-farm copies of the same stuff. I quit looking for recipes on google. Bought a dozen of recipe books last year. fuck that shit.
- marak830 3y agoAs an ex chef, escoffier as a basis, then salt fat acid heat by Samin nosrat. Recipes are a guide for unfamiliar, but once you learn the profiles of each ingredient you can expand greatly. I know it's a bit off your comments and I certainly search myself for new basis to play with, but I hope it helps :-)
- esafak 3y agoSalt, Fat, Acid, Heat opened my eyes; it showed me an insightful way to deconstruct flavor and therefore the building blocks to construct it. Highly recommended!
- mvdtnz 3y agoRespectfully this is obnoxious advice for the majority of home cooks. We just want to know what to cook and how.
- spdif899 3y agoYeah those books are definitely great and the building blocks Nosrat provides are crucial for any home chef that wants to take a scientific approach to decision making in the kitchen. But most of the time, I just want to pick a recipe as a starting point
- gumby 3y agoIt’s the opposite. There’s nothing wrong at all with “cook by numbers” and it’s especially great if you didn’t learn to cook as a child. It’s like learning at a coding boot camp where you learn to write some simple business logic based on a spec, or learning algebra in grade 8: basically syntactic transforms with no theory. But Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach you to look in the fridge when you’re hungry but unmotivated and quickly make something from what happens to be there that isn’t boring, faster and cheaper than ordering junk food delivery. Yes you could turn into a fancy chef but the suggested advice is great for someone like me, who doesn’t really care particularly about food.
- MrPatan 3y agoIsn't that an admission that the first page is not good enough in so many cases now that they had to make pagination easier?
- wildrhythms 3y agoIt's probably an experiment to see how many results people will scroll without the need to click to the next page.
- liveoneggs 3y agoI get a weird colored-card-based layout on mobile when they run out of normal search results.
- PugPaladin 3y agoI'm surprised that I'm asking this because I've been such a fan of Google for years....but does anyone have alternative suggestions for Google products? ( Looking for alternative suggestions for: 1. Google Maps (yikes was it bad when I used it this week) 2. Google Docs (such a frustrating lack of features) 3. Google Drive (it's impossible to find anything when you are sharing docs with someone) 4. Google Search (ChatGPT has spoiled me and I find Google Search to be a large waste of time) 5. Google Classroom (their quizzes/homeworks/forms are unbelievable bad and I can't tell what students can see vs what they can't) 6. Gmail (I've love gmail for so long but with all the other products just being so bad it's making me wonder what else I'm missing something better) Sorry to sh!t on Google so much, but everything is just so mediocre that I'm tired of it and want something higher quality. Anyone have thoughts?
- inglor 3y agoExcel Online is free, got a lost faster and has the vast majority of Excel features. (Full disclosure I work on it)
- PugPaladin 3y agoWow that's great. I had no idea - thank you.
- chrisco255 3y agoGoogle maps has deteriorated considerably for me recently. It used to be flawless, but now it routes me through random neighborhoods and awkward narrow streets, like I haven't seen navigation this bad since MapQuest.
- LinuxBender 3y agoOpenStreetMap [1] is a potential alternative to Google Maps for some. [1] - https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/
- ziml77 3y ago> ChatGPT has spoiled me and I find Google Search to be a large waste of time I hope you're not blindly trusting answers. I experimented with ChatGPT for a while and (even when using the GPT-4 model) I would get answers that were false but didn't sound too unreasonable. I could have easily been misled if I didn't already know the answers to the things I was asking it.
- paganel 3y agoJust noticed it now, I’m on mobile. They really spilled the beans on this one, I guess that’s one way of saying that they give up for good when it comes to helping people to find stuff on the web.
- blakesterz 3y agoYeah, got that here quite a while ago. Though it also comes and goes. It's... I don't know, better and worse at the same time? I notice it, and I feel like after a few page downs I just need a new search, so I need to go back up and start over. I guess it's a step down?
- joker_minmax 3y agoI'm often using Google search in Incognito/Private/InPrivate windows, so I'm getting to see all the, pardon my french, bullshit they're AB testing on users constantly. I've so far seen three distinct forms of infinite scroll (edit: on Mobile, for clarification). One is just infinite scroll with classic results in a list format as usual. The second type I have encountered is that after about 7 to 10 lines of results in typical list format, it will begin showing you everything in a grid format of squircles, where it's harder to read the text previews. The third form of infinite scroll I have seen, and in my opinion the worst, is that after fifteen or so results, it begins showing you results for a separate (but allegedly related) query, and forces you to hit a button to continue seeing results for what you actually wanted to see... and get this, the button to see more doesn't always work. Sometimes it gives an error message. (This one irritated me because I was looking at translations for a song into English, and then the results started showing translations for different songs from the same other language, but not even by the same artist -- very helpful, Google!) Currently for me, in mobile Chrome, both Incognito tabs and normal tabs display infinite scroll of the list type, where results appear more or less in "normal" format, albeit more spaced out than they were a few years ago.
- jatins 3y agoIt has been infinite scroll for a while for me, which was fine but seems like they did that just to pave way for their second trick: displaying ads interspersed with actual results. IMO the only things distinguishing ads from actual results now is a small "Ad" label. Previously the placement also used to be an indicator, where by muscle memory you'd typically skip first few results. Few bad quarters and I am sure some PM at Google will write a brief for A/B testing removal of Ad label
- darreninthenet 3y agoThe UK ASA will kick that to death very quickly, they are very hot on paid placement being labelled
- ProxCoques 3y agoMultiple businesses I have worked for in the last 20 years A/B tested infinite vs paginated scroll and found that the infinite leads to more stuff being seen, and therefore bought. Google was holding out because of the way they sold ads, but we knew they'd change eventually.
- breadwinner 3y agoThey had to make this change because they increased the number of ads. If the result is paginated, a high percentage of links in the first page would be ads. With infinite scroll that's not a problem because there are an infinite number of links on "the first page". Overall, Google has turned up the number of ads. Not just in search, but also in YouTube and also in Gmail. In YouTube, you didn't have ads in low-view-count videos. Now they have ads in all videos, whether the video owner turned it on or not. In Gmail, in the Promotions tab, only the top couple of items were ads, now there are ads interspersed with the rest of the mails. Increasing revenue by turning up the volume of ads is very short sighted. Personally, I find Google properties less interesting now, and it is tarnishing the Google brand. So why are they doing this? Perhaps they need to fill a revenue shortfall caused by ChatGPT?
- vram22 3y agoNowadays while watching videos in YouTube, I get more occurrences of ads, even in short videos, compared to just a few days back. Very irritating. Started looking out for other options than YouTube.
- Dudester230602 3y agoI often forget YouTube even has any ads, but then again I am using uBlock Origin.
- rtsil 3y agoYoutube without uBlock origin is a traumatizing experience, and it's gotten worse in the last month or so. It went from bearable to let's plug the laptop to the TV unbearable. A couple of weeks ago, I had 3 blocks of ads in 10 minute-videos for the first time. Now, I have 3 blocks of ad (before/middle/after) in 5 minute videos.
- climb_stealth 3y agoWhat boggles my mind is that for many many people this is their lived experience. They experience an internet inundated by ads. It's in equal parts incredible, sad and depressing. Shakes fist at sky. Saying that as someone who has always used ad blockers but is also paying for the youtube premium family plan.
- baerrie 3y agoGoogle’s search results page is a mess now. It is now an endless feed mimicking social apps cluttered by obtrusive images and suggested content that is never really what you want
- fidla 3y agoI use Perplexity AI for most searches
- JOnAgain 3y ago7 reasons why you think google has switched to infinite scroll. Before we get to the 7 reasons, let’s describe what Google is …
- londons_explore 3y agoFor anyone frustrated with Google searches poor result set - especially for very obscure search terms where it often returns "0 results" even though you know that what you're looking for is on the internet... Try Baidu. Its search index is much bigger, and even if you don't speak chinese it is very usable. I frequently find what I'm looking for there when Google fails me.
- paxys 3y agoAnd as a bonus, problematic results are already removed by PRC censors so you don’t have to worry.
- londons_explore 3y agoNot really - it's chock full of spam. But when Google says no results, I'd prefer to wade through a fre pages of spam than to simply not find what I'm looking for.
- O1111OOO 3y agoSide note: It's so weird for me to hear the term "google search". It's what happens when you haven't used a site directly in years. I almost have to ask myself (facetiously), is Google Search still a thing? The same thing has happened with Microsoft. I used to be a Windows/GUI user (never in love with the company going back to DOS, I was a PC-DOS user (IBM)) until I switched over to Linux many years ago. Microsoft basically ceased to exist (except for github). I hear Microsoft in the news and it's almost like they exist in a parallel universe. Apple - never has existed (for me). Facebook/Twitter - accts but never use. Spotify - nope. Etc, etc... The only reason I bring this up is because, despite this, I still remain well-connected. I have lost nothing from the Web. I strongly feel that the hold these big tech companies have on many of us is tenuous at best. Google best not forget this. Reddit certainly has forgotten and with but a metaphorical wave of my hand, reddit now too ceases to exist (for me) - and I've lost little. Big Tech... replaceable (hmm... mostly). PS: Still rely/use Google (gmail, YouTube, Maps, Android), so there's one big tech firm I still depend on. YouTube, Maps and Android being the really hard ones to replace.
- mikewarot 3y agoIt looks like it's all Ads to me now.... that's worthless. Ugh... I might have to switch to Bing
- mintplant 3y agoWeirdly, the "downgraded" Google search experience I get in Firefox is more functional than the "full" one I can get through Chrome or the Google search bar on my phone. An infobox or two followed by a paginated list of relevant links, compared with all the noisy bells and whistles and sometimes multiple screen-fulls of sponsored content they throw into their modern SRPs.
- crtified 3y agoIt's weird being an old-school desktop computer user who never jumped on the mobile bandwagon. Not just because it makes me somewhat a dinosaur, but also because anecdotes about the average users internet experience these days sound like tales from some slightly-dystopic parallel universe.
- lgsalamon 3y agotry this one: https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=best+of+google&profile=default&js=default https://search.marginalia.nu/search?query=best+of+google&pro...
- vitorgrs 3y agoNo, unfortunately, because I would actually want infinite scrolling.
- brutal_chaos_ 3y agoI stopped using Google for most searches for a long while now. I suggest you do the same. It's not like they're going to make user centric changes now, just wallet centric ones.
- dvh 3y agoI still see paging: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+interpolate+between+two+complex+numbers https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+interpolate+between+t...
- firecall 3y agoI don’t have it yet, but as a Search User I think I’d be OK with it? Then as a business or blog that wants to get indexed, I feel like the friction no longer being a >= page 2 result is going to surface more content and get more clicks. I guess it will allow for more ads with potentially better click through on ads as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gaucheries 3y agoyou can toggle Continuous Scrolling in Search Settings.
- JakobKlocker 3y agoHey, I have the same problem. I do not want to discuss about ads or which way is better. I just want the old google search back. Did someone actually answer the original question?
- JakobKlocker 3y agoDoes anyone know which countries still have a regular google search with pagination? I was thinking about getting a VPN and using Google with a country that still has the old Google Search...
- AccomplishedSun 3y agoI'm afraid to jinx it, but I live in Russia, and it seems that this function has not yet been introduced here. I'm not sure if this will help, but before getting the VPN you can try going to Search Settings and changing your region to Russia.