Google is always striving to improve and create a better user experience for searchers around the world. It looks like in the near future we might have a new change that could make a pretty huge impact on SEO. I am sure that you have seen some of the changes already in place with the black toolbar:
This uniformed look will take a little bit of getting used to for me personally, but it is nice to see that Google is going for a more simplistic and modern look. Now this particular design is not what is going to make the impact on SEO that I am talking about. This actually has already been implemented in some aspects of search but not with the main search yet.
To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, let’s go to Google and do a search for my favorite mountain: Mount Timpanogos (It’s a Native American name, pronounced Timp A No Gus)
At first glance, you can see that this seems to look like a normal image search.
Google gives you different suggestions for other searches if this may not exactly be what you are looking for, and then they pull up what they believe to be the most relevant images that match what you are looking for.
Typically with a normal search, once you reach the bottom, you will see “Goooogle” with each “O” representing the next page of results. In this image search. we see that isn’t the case. It will tell you when page 2 begins but it instead becomes an Infinite search. As you keep scrolling down more images continue to pop up and you don’t have to click to go to the next page. They just show up for you.
Microsoft’s Bing was actually the first search engine to have this feature, but Google followed suit pretty quickly once they saw how great a feature it was. The speculation and testing that have been seen from Google is that they are wanting to implement this same type of search model into a normal search query.
Now the reason I say it will make an impact in SEO is not necessarily in a bad way, it might actually be more positive for a lot of businesses and people trying to be found. This will remove the hassle of having to click to go to the next page in a search result. You just continue to scroll down and each page will pop up. Being ranked #1 on a search result may not be as important as it is now, and those sites that are on the 2nd or 3rd page will more than likely get higher traffic.
It’s a rather interesting change that we might see in the upcoming months. It also may not happen at all. Google is always experimenting with their products and seeing what people like and don’t like. I personally think that this would be a great addition to search, and maybe level the playing field a little bit for the underdogs.
