Friday, January 20, 2012

Page layout algorithm update - Google discourages using too much AdSense

Not sure if you've read the latest news -- Google said that you must NOT put 'too much' AdSense above the fold on your site and if you do, then you will be penalized in the search ranking...

Google's Matt Cutts in his post Page layout algorithm improvement on Jan 19 said:

"In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.

As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward....."

The announcement was posted in Inside Search as well as the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

So, they are now including it in their algorithm as one of their ranking factors.

This doesn't surprise me greatly. As they had earlier said that they would be concentrating greatly on the "user experience". Users don't want to be presented with loads of ads when they are searching for information. They want the information!

But, how much is "too much ads"?

Well, it may be hard to quantify. But commonsense tells us that a page with 90% content and 10% ads should be fine. Just my 2 cents. You'll have to decide for yourself.

So, it's time to take a look at all of your sites and make sure that you don't
have just Adsense (or other ads) above the fold on your page. Good luck.

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