Google Ads

Continuous Scrolling: Impact on Google Ads?

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3 min. read - Posted on 07/01/2022

Google introduces continuous scrolling on mobile

Google has announced that it will introduce continuous scrolling on mobile devices.

What does continuous scrolling mean?

The classic page selection at the end of a search results page will be removed in future – at least on mobile devices. Instead, additional search results pages will be loaded automatically, as Google announced on Twitter.

With Continuous Scrolling, the manual loading of page 2, 3, etc. in the search results will no longer be necessary in the future.

Initially, however, Google is only testing this function in the USA.

Although there has been no page selection by means of numbers in mobile search results for a long time, until now you still had to manually load new search results via the “See more” button.

Currently you have to load search results of page 2, 3 etc. manually.

This will change in the future. Smartphone users will no longer have to actively choose to see more search results, but will be shown more and more of them through continuous scrolling.

However, continuous scrolling is not to be mixed up with infinite scrolling, as Google also mentioned via Twitter. Only the first four search results pages are automatically loaded by scrolling. If you then want to see the search results on page 5, a “See more” button will appear again.

Continuous Scrolling is no infinite scrolling.

What are the impacts of Continuous Scrolling for Google Ads?

How does Continuous Scrolling affect my Google Ads activities? Does it have any influence at all?

In principle, yes, Continuous Scrolling will also have an impact on Google Ads, even though it will initially have no influence on the functioning of the ad auctions and nothing will change in the calculation of the ad rank.

However, Continuous Scrolling will change the distribution of text ads on mobile devices. In the future, text ads will be more likely to be seen at the top of the second page, rather than at the bottom of the first. Thus, more impressions could be generated from the top ads – and less from the bottom ads. In principle, Google expects the values for clicks, conversions, average CPC and average CPA to remain constant.

Conclusion: Continuous Scrolling & Google Ads – is there a need for action?

Even if continuous scrolling has some influence on the distribution of text ads, the effects of continuous scrolling on Google Ads are rather small. For the time being, there is no concrete need for action for Google Ads Managers.

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