Search Engines And Infinite Scrolling

Ever wondered why every social media platforms use infinite scrolling and why a company like Google does not. The giant, the creator of the game, is not using a method which proved to be more successful when it comes to content consumption by users. A few days back, when we all were not in self-quarantine, My batchmates and I were discussing during our business analytics class, how companies have changed the way people interact with websites. How infinite scrolling has changed our content consumption. Suddenly a question struck, why Google does not use infinite scrolling. For a while, everyone was baffled, but then reasoning started to pour in in the discussion. Some said because so that you and I can talk about the same link, to say the fourth link on the fourteenth page. Can be a possibility. Some said it used to do that but it has removed it now (That is true, though). So my friend and I went on to test whether the claim made earlier is true or not. So we fired up our browsers and typed “MBA” and hit the go button, in a fraction of second we were served with thousand of results, and it did not take us long enough to reject the claim, we do not even have to touch multiple pages. The results shown to us were different, I think they were customised on our past behaviour. So the claim that you and I can point out toward the same link, was thrown out of the open window. So question persisted, why Google does not use infinite scrolling. I went on to google for the same (googling about the google). There is no official answer from Google, but some forums argued that it will give the user the choice paralysis, a situation where a user is unable to choose. Then there was an epiphany, the thing that distinguishes social media companies and Google search is the type of content they are providing. The posts that you see on your Facebook wall, Snapchat and Instagram are not ordinal, but on Google search they are. There is a ranking of every page, there is a certain map in google’s algorithm that puts the first page at its spot. The posts on social media platforms are in reverse chronological order, except a few (twitter), but on the other hand, Google search does not use the timestamp as the main parameter to set the order of the pages. When everything seemed to be fitting in, like a jigsaw puzzle, we got a piece which said, “then what about people paying to get their ranks up on the google search”, and what about algorithm setting an order. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for google to offer more ranking to page owners then to limit them for just ten (search result per page)? None of us has the answer, but it may be that Google does not want us to interact with the content in a way that social media platforms want. It wants us to click on a link and visit the site, unlike social media where they just want you to show the content and give you a free choice to interact or not, to like or comment or share but Google wants us to interact to choose a site and visit because that’s what the purpose of a search engine, infinite scrolling will give us choices not solutions for the problems we search. The question persists.