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

searchengineland.com

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

#41

Post by PaulHoule »

RuggeroAltair wrote: post #27
PaulHoule wrote: post #21

i'm pretty amazed that they didn't do this a long time ago... sites with no content above the fold have been a problem for a long time...

I think they have been trying for a long time, but while it's possible to conceive the idea in a second, it might be harder to find the right algorithms to do it in an effective way. After all they make changes every day and study the response of users randomly distributing new versions of the algorithm to a small group of users that are effectively beta testers without even knowing it. It is a known problem, that's…

well, i think also Google has a motivation to make the search results as bad as they can get away with.

a crappy page with nothing but ads is going to get clicks, and since Google is the #1 ad network, it means more money for Google.

if Google organic search results were perfect, people would never click on the ads. the worse the results are, the more likely the ads are better and you get trained to click... and ker-ching!

Google needs to be good enough to (i) discourage mass defection to Bing and Duck-Duck-Go, (ii) not produce public outrage as happened when A list bloggers were getting outranked by duplicate content, and (iii) not get in trouble for anti-trust. (Hint: if you want to run a spam farm, buy a second or third tier search engine.

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

#42

Post by adgar »

chc wrote: post #37

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 th…

> But that's the most relevant motivation I can think of for this change.

Really? You think "a sneaky way to penalize pirate sites" is a more relevant motivation than "help users find information more easily by trying to filter out sites that have so many ads they obscure content"?

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

#43

Post by chc »

adgar wrote: post #42
chc wrote: post #37

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 th…

> But that's the most relevant motivation I can think of for this change. Really? You think "a sneaky way to penalize pirate sites" is a more relevant motivation than "help users find information more easily by trying to filter out sites that have so many ads they obscure content"?

Yes. The latter motivation is not at all timely. I don't see any reason for Google to be more concerned about it than they have been for the last five years.

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

#44

Post by mike-cardwell »

TylerE wrote: post #5

Rather ironic to see this on a site so crowed with obnoxious social media-cruft that it actually took me about 5 seconds to find the article text...

Prime example of a page which works better if you have NoScript+RequestPolicy+AdBlock installed. Just opened it in my vanilla Chrome installation so I could see what you meant.

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

#45

Post by mike-cardwell »

jonknee wrote: post #9
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.

Why would you assume that they don't fully analyze web pages? Google makes most advanced Javascript engine and the fastest growing browser, it's beyond belief that they aren't rendering every page. (For starters, how do you think they get all those preview images?)

The Googlebot doesn't fetch external css or javascript. How can it be rendering the full page if it doesn't have those resources?

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

#47

Post by adgar »

chc wrote: post #43
adgar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's the most relevant motivation I can think of for this change. Really? You think "a sneaky way to penalize pirate sites" is a more relevant motivation than "help users find information more easily by trying to filter out sites that have so many ads they obscure content"?

Yes. The latter motivation is not at all timely. I don't see any reason for Google to be more concerned about it than they have been for the last five years.

> Yes. The latter motivation is not at all timely. I don't see any reason for Google to be more concerned about it than they have been for the last five years.

So you're under the assumption that Google implemented every quality-related change to the core ranking algorithms - every change they ever wanted - 5 years ago, and now they just sit around and react to politics.

Gotcha.

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

#48

Post by resnamen »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #46

Yeah, too many ads above the fold sucks: https://img.skitch.com/20120121-rwyw8bm7mhu86ptrjuq1mpfqg.jp...

I count three ads above the fold. I believe the results below those top ads are still search results, just presented in different modalities.

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

#49

Post by re_format »

So many issues with the internet seem to devolve into the same thing: a fight over who gets to show ads to the naive user.

Eventually Google itself will be showing "too many ads above the fold". Does anyone doubt it?

Gaming the search engine to be numero uno on the SERP is one thing. But proclaming a penalty for websites that have "too many ads"? That seems like it's for users to decide, not Google. Not to mention hypocritical. Can we penalise Google for "too many ads"?

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