Google Search testing forcing searchers to sign in to get more search results

Google seems to be running a limited test where it is asking searchers to sign in to their Google account to “verify you’re a human and see more results.” Normally, Google Search would serve the user a captcha to verify they are human, but here Google is asking the searcher to actually sign in to their Google account.

What it looks like. This was spotted by Kamlesh Shukla posted about this on X and shared this screenshot:

As you can see, Google is asking this searcher to “Sign in to continue.” It says:

• “Sign in to verify you’re a human and see more results”

This happened after this searcher conducted a Google Search and when past the first few pages of the search results. I suspect most humans do not click past the first or second page of the search results but still, normally Google would serve a captcha and not request the user to sign in.

Why we care. This is a new experience from Google Search to verify human activity. If rolled out, it can cause issues for many of the SEO tracking tools and even tools like SerpAPI which was sued by Google for scraping its search results, which Google lost in a court.

This seems to be a limited test right now, so we are not sure if Google will release this more widely.