Google is testing an interstitial that asks searchers to click a “Continue” button before a results page loads, verifying the visitor without requiring sign in. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Glenn Gabe spotted the test and posted a screenshot in which the button sits greyed out briefly, then turns blue once Google has satisfied itself a person is behind the request. A similar prompt in French, documented by marketer Alexis Rylko, suggests the test is not limited to English-language search.
The Continue gate follows an August test that required signing in to keep viewing results, plus the goto-redirect change and long-standing captcha challenges, each aimed at automated traffic hitting the results page rather than organic clicks from a browser.
A delay before rendering is more than cosmetic. Rank trackers and SERP-monitoring scripts request results pages the same way scrapers do, and a gate built to slow non-human requests can throttle that collection too. Teams running daily rank-tracking feeds should confirm their tool vendor has adapted to the Continue gate before trusting a sudden gap in the data.
Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz reported the test on September 1, 2026.
