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Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

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Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#31

Post by icebraining »

staunch wrote: post #7
joejohnson wrote: post #2

Yep, only Google's search results page gets to be top-heavy with ads.

Completely true. http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=breast+r... There are 11 paid links and 10 organic. At least 75% of the above-the-fold content is ads.

Only one ad, no Adblock: http://i.imgur.com/35ZjK.jpg

I think Google likes me :P

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#32

Post by smallblacksun »

chc wrote: post #14
joejohnson wrote: post #2

Yep, only Google's search results page gets to be top-heavy with ads.

Google is penalizing sites that violate their standards of top-heaviness. I don't think it's fair to call them hypocrites because they don't meet your standards.

The article shows the "credit cards" results page with (at his resolution) 4 top ads, 4 full and 1 partial side ad, and 1 partial result shown. If 9 ads to 1 line of content isn't top-heavy with ads according to google's standards, then their standards are worthless.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#33

Post by jbottigliero »

joejohnson wrote: post #2

Yep, only Google's search results page gets to be top-heavy with ads.

This argument sort of rubs me the wrong way. It makes perfect sense for a search engine to penalize pages that are ad-top-heavy; Why should it matter what Google does on it's own pages? I get it, practice what you preach, but I'm pretty sure Google is not concerned with the SEO of their results pages. The whole argument seems to be reaching for something that isn't there.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#34

Post by anigbrowl »

joejohnson wrote: post #2

Yep, only Google's search results page gets to be top-heavy with ads.

Disagree. I whitelist google and all subdommains with adblock because a moderate number of text-only ads is both reasonable and can even be useful. By contrast, many sites seem to use 80%+ of their bandwidth on advertising cruft and serve pitifully thin content.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#35

Post by chc »

smallblacksun wrote: post #32
chc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is penalizing sites that violate their standards of top-heaviness. I don't think it's fair to call them hypocrites because they don't meet your standards.

The article shows the "credit cards" results page with (at his resolution) 4 top ads, 4 full and 1 partial side ad, and 1 partial result shown. If 9 ads to 1 line of content isn't top-heavy with ads according to google's standards, then their standards are worthless.

If that results page were even close to the average case for Google, I'll agree with you. But it's not, so it doesn't really prove much of anything. Google isn't going to penalize your whole site just because one page out of a million is a little over the line.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#36

Post by prawn »

robk wrote: post #6

This seems rather contradictory with the general AdSense historic guidance to run up to 3 ad units and place them generally to the top and left side of the page (per various pieces of heatmap research often cited). Seems like this could be pretty easily gamed too depending on how much of a CSS-wizard you are, as I suppose the algorithms are somewhat limited in analyzing CSS vs plain HTML layout or Javascript.

I regularly get emails from Google's AdSense program encouraging me to add more ad blocks, and as you said, they include a template that encourages you to place those ads high on the page. Got one of these emails just yesterday funnily enough.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#37

Post by chc »

I wonder if this isn't at least partly a sneaky way to penalize pirate sites without needing to wade into the intractable question of copyright. There seems to be a strong correlation between a site's sketchiness and the likelihood that it will plaster obnoxious ads all over the top of every page, and the timing is weirdly coincidental if not.

(I really hope this doesn't derail one of the few non-SOPA threads. But that's the most relevant motivation I can think of for this change.)

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#38

Post by whatusername »

icebraining wrote: post #31
staunch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely true. http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=breast+r... There are 11 paid links and 10 organic. At least 75% of the above-the-fold content is ads.

Only one ad, no Adblock: http://i.imgur.com/35ZjK.jpg I think Google likes me :P

Strange. I was like OP. 11 ads (3 top, 8 side), 9 results, 3 images.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#39

Post by epochwolf »

chc wrote: post #15
epochwolf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any ads actually. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/361483/archive/google_search.png

No shock there — you're running AdBlock.

Sorry, I completely forgot about that. It's amazing how different everything looks with it off. I think I'm going to keep it on.

Re: Pages With Too Many Ads Above The Fold Now Penalized By Google

#40

Post by j_col »

zone411 wrote: post #23

This change also needs to penalize pages with full screen ads that are not always being shown (NY Times among others do it). Can anyone at Google confirm or deny whether these types of pages are being penalized?

Since when did Google become the Internet police? Seriously, I don't think it's their role to penalize anything you find annoying online.
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