Google To Remove Pagination From Search Results??!!

I read an article this morning in Search Engine Roundtable that really disturbed me, and the implications of its impact on SEO are...frightening...frankly.

What do you think of this? Is it a bug? A beta rollout? Whatever it is, I don't like it - and I'm wondering what some of the aficionados here think of it:

http://bit.ly/a52U6r
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(Text taken directly from post)
There are several reports from users that Google has removed the page 2 and so on from the bottom of the Google search results. That is right, Google, for some users, has removed the option to go to a second page of results and the pagination is all gone.

Here is a picture of what some searchers are missing:

(available in original post)


We have reports of this at Google Blogoscoped Forums, WebmasterWorld & Google Web Search Help.

Some are asking if this is a feature or a bug. I am personally not sure. One person said it only is an issue on IE when going directly to Google.com:

If I search from the toolbar, I still get pagination, but searching directly on google.com gives me related searches but no further pages.
I only see this in IE, using Firefox the pagination links are just there.
I personally cannot replicate it but it is an issue for a nice number of people.

 

I didn't find this problem in any browser. I am using mozilla firefox 3.6.10 and IE8. But i didn't face this problem. There is no pagination problem for me. Even i checked in google chrome no pagination problem

 

Maybe it's just some rumour? I don't think they would take away the pages of results just like that.

 

Rest assured, there's already an update on the original article:

Update: Google told me this is not a feature, but rather a bug. A Google spokesperson said:
This is a bug affecting a small number of users. We will work to resolve it as soon as we can.

 

does it make any difference? one of my sites dropped to page 2 and traffic from google instantly dropped to zero. you need to be on numero uno.

 

Well actually, I think it would make a huge difference.

Without pagination, you wouldn't know how close to the first page you are, and in turn what marketing efforts (and at what rate) you'd need to implement your strategy to get onto it.

Anyhow, it was just a bug, phew.

 

Precisely. You need the latter pages to figure out whether your SEO efforts are paying off!

 

Pagination is showing for me. I think there might be some bug or limited searches some time. So google may not be showing it.

 

I do not think that google has applied to all services. I mean I have seen new look in google Images.

 

I rarely find what I want on page 1 (page 1 is usually full of spammy crap or forum posts) so I'd be lost without the other pages.

Oh, for the days when page 1 had relevant stuff. For one of my sites, with a particular keyword string, the first page of hits don't even have that string in at all, just the words in the wrong order. The actual accurate hits start on page 2.

 

They are trying to experiment what they have done with Google images section with all pagination gone.

 

It is definitely a bug. There's no reason for Google to make such a big change that would only annoy users.

 

YEah me too got that bug

 

It cannot be happen, maybe just a bug.

 

People, READ again what jinnnguyen mentioned in his post!

 

Limiting a user's ability to search beyond 10 results would definitely be a fail.