Google Pivots From Infinite Scroll As AI Ushers In Next Era Of Search

Some are calling it the death of the infinite scroll.

I prefer to think of it as the birth of AI making search exquisitely digestible for everyone — and, more importantly, an opportunity for a new era of monetization and a rebirth of sorts for search.

The advent of generative-AI has fomented significant considerations around data rights and ownership as LLMs abstract content and create monetization opportunities for both Google and content creators.

This will inevitably ignite a battle for monetization between Google, the dynamic duo of Microsoft Corp./OpenAI, and new entrants like Anthropic, Cohere, and Perplexity. Amazon Q, a chatbot for enterprise use, is poised to also cash in for shopping.

Bottom line, the generative AI era will rebirth the way we interact with search: The “fold,” once again becomes relevant as we are look for incredibly consolidated views. One potential crucial example would be finding specific data assets within an enterprise around customer churn based on demographics.

There are already signs of things to come. In the media space, Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler this week introduced Smashing, an AI- and community-powered content recommendation app designed to bring news summaries, key excerpts and relevant pull quotes to readers.

SUB: A NEW KIND OF SEARCH

The search experience is in for radical change after Google recently disclosed that continuous scrolling of search results, which it introduced in late 2021 to mirror the behavior of social media feeds, is being phased out “to serve the search results faster on more searches, instead of automatically loading results that users haven’t explicitly requested, the company told Search Engine Land.

What’s new: Those visiting Google’s search pagination bar on desktop devices will now be able to go directly to a specific page of search results — or click “Next” to see the next page. For mobile users, a “More results” button will soon appear at the bottom of a search to load the next page.

Truth be told, we are finally resetting the search experience from an endless scroll to a prompt, above-the-fold summary and/or content with minimal hallucinations.

The true beneficiaries under the search shift are the LLM makers that need to retrain the consumer to use AI in a way that can be monetized. As we quickly adjust to the way large language models feed us abstracted results and high-value summaries, we are moving away from an era where endlessly scrolling results makes sense.

And where there is money, there is sure to be conflict. Challenges await, for example, in prioritizing sources into abstracts vs. monetizing sources. Many of them will be dealt with in the models, but opaqueness could favor revenue over accuracy. I see this as one of the most important inflections in the generative AI era. With a small number of content agreements between media and technology companies being reached, like Time Magazine’s recent deal with OpenAI, it appears that licensing content to improve the quality of abstracts could be a big part of the revenue model for content creators.

However, search providers that have long depended on pay-per-click behavior and a heavy dose of ads in our search feed will have to be prudent to monitor behavior on LLM-driven search results. If this meaningfully changes behavior, it could create substantial challenges for the likes of Google and Microsoft to a lesser extent. The Holy Grail is highly accurate abstracts with the highest fidelity results while still monetizing the service through ads and data.

NOT SOLD ON PAGINATION

The shift from endless scrolling has understandably ignited debates about its impact on user behavior and website traffic; many SEO experts argue that results after the first page produce minimal clicks, and that an infinite scroll helped lower-ranked sites gain much-needed visibility. Pagination threatens to minimize traffic for less-visible sites

Those sites, especially at the bottom of the page, benefitted from another additional scroll, according to a 2021 report from SearchEngineLand.

Where multiple opinions and results were once available on a third or fourth page of an endless scroll, leading to a serendipitous discovery of something new and original, there may be just a few items listed now.

There is a great risk this will intermediate small businesses, leaving the floor primarily to the big guys.

There are lots of unknowns as we enter a new approach to search, but exciting times as well in a sign of further change to come—Moreover, the end of search as we know it may already be here—only the pace and finality of this pivot is left to be determined.