In a blog post today Matt Cutts of Google delivers what appears to be bad news for mini-sites or other sites top-heavy with ads.
According to the post, Google is once again changing their algorithm to penalize sites that “don’t have much content “above-the-fold”.
Here is the full post:
“”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.””
“”We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.””
“”This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly.””
“”You can use our Browser Size tool, among many others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.””
“”If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.””
“”Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus on specific algorithm tweaks. This change is just one of the over 500 improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. As always, please post your feedback and questions in our Webmaster Help forum. “”
Will be interesting to see the affects of this update on site designs and layouts. I can see a lot of companies who have been leveraging more brochure-oriented site concepts moving towards more blog-oriented site layouts and marketing concepts. I personally like the move and think it will be good news for bloggers and site developers who can put out good content, another move in the direction of active, original content and social validation. I was thinking the other day about SEO and domains. With so much importance being placed on social validation, brand names really begin to carry a lot of weight. I think it makes well branded domains that much more valuable.
blog
what is bad is that Google can manipulate the results in all the manners it wants!!!!
what is bad is that Google can manipulate
the results in all the manners
it wants
@Michael
please join the parts of my comment
I’ve sliced it because the blog system has rejected the full comment
Dictating how a site should be designed and how you make money on your site. . .. sigh.
Isn’t an ecommerce site one giant ad ? Amazon’s homepage for example.
Google is moving in the right direction, if their product is not producing the most relevant, most active search results available to end users, the competition will catch up with them but they have a lot of control of who wins and who loses and a lot of say on how you will play the game.
Get this spamming turd out of here please.
Websites are certainly at the mercy of Google. But it is hard not to agree with having original content on your site. Part I don’t get is that it seems you raise your serps by having less Google ads. Kind of strange situation for Google isn’t it?
So you can have the most relevant content, but if you are aggressive in trying to monetize your site than your site will move down in the SERPS.
Can someone bring back Google from 3 years ago before the past 10 changes which have penalized webmasters and bolstered Google owned sites’ placements in the SERPS.
And if I want to see a video of something I will use the keyword “video” in my search. I don’t need 3 video results above the Google fold when I’m trying to find written information.
So, one company is determining content, search, ad, revenue, placement, layout and design, good, bad, beauty, ugly, of websites…
Beauty is posed to be in the eye of the beholder?
It’s bizarre to have one company tell both consumers and business what a site layout should be, or even content.
I believe Google should be broken up into 10 pieces. This is getting crazier and crazier. People spend money to build their website, and Google comes in after the fact, every other day it seems, and change the rules, and dictate what everyone should do in other to earn a dollar. It’s akin to former AT&T of the 1970’s and 80’s where they sold, leased telephones, charged for calls, owned all pay phones, where they should be placed, the yellow pages, and so forth; once they were broken up, the world saw innovation in telecommunications. It’s time again for congress to go to work.
I can’t even begin to think through all of the implications of how changes to their search algorithm affect their revenue streams, that is a big job for a big computer. They have plenty of cash on the books, they can afford to take the hit if the changes disrupt revenue flows in the short term.
I like to believe the best product will make them the most money and they move forward with the best intentions for their end users, which are searchers and not site developers and SEO marketers.
Hi,
”Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.”
“don’t have much content “above-the-fold”
____
Both describe a “Google” search engine results page…Perfectly!
Peace
‘D’
“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”.
At their scale that’s nonsense, they don’t hear a word anymore (have they ever?). It’s all about numbers, analytics.
According to Matt Cutts, all web sites should look like this: http://mattcutts.com
Welcome to the Internet circa 1992.
Funny thing is I also got a email from google adsense yesterday telling me to add a 3rd ad unit to the page. they suggested the right upper corner area in my layout.
They are a for-profit company, PPC ads aren’t going anywhere. There will always be opportunity to rank sites well without paying for placement.
I haven’t analyzed the click through rates of search results – paid vs. natural – in sometime, I do see the real estate of the PPC ads, Im sure rates of clicks from paid placements has risen.
As for monetization, sell products and services, not ads. And if you want to sell ads, sell them yourself. Fuck Google Site Ads.
excuse my language, Im not from around here, not sure if we use the F word in here. hahaha, I like to use it.
Stop Spamming Brad Miller…We don’t like people like you!
I’m not spamming, I’m participating.
and you can fuck off, whoever you are. hahaha
Yep put the new Google ads on the back of the billboards on 888. I am looking for the exit to the airport- let me find that first then show the ad after I’ve left.
“New Google ads start appearing Tuesday in dozens of U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and magazines, including Time and the New Yorker. Google Inc. also will splash its message across billboards within the subways of New York and Washington, as well as various websites.”
But then you have to wonder why Google needs to buy advertising when they are advertising.
oops- I guess they have to ban this site: http://www.bestbuy.com/ and http://www.target.com/ etc
————- ACHTUNG —————-
Zee Internet belongs to Google.
So you Vant to run an online business, do you?
Zen, you Vill do as you are told!
You Vill follow ALL orders of Zee Google High Command!
Or, you Vill suffer Zee consequences.
Who does Zis Vebsite belong to?
Papers Pleeeze!
Sieg Heil Mein Google
Say it …Say it …Ve Order You To Say It!
Sieg Heil Mein Google
@ Professional domains said: “you raise your serps by having less Google ads.”
That is my impression, too! Google wants pure content sites it can place ads around on the search results. My pure content sites always do well in the rankings . . .
Obviously google believes its in their financial self interest to do this.
Seems to be out of the same motives that de-monetized parking pages.
So they are going to drive content sites higher in ranking. Sites with few ads.
Maybe its a way to penalize sites that have ads from other ad networks, from
gaining revenue from google’s own organic search results.
Quite a lot of registrars “bottom-load” their front pages with keyword-rich content.
See godaddy.com for an example.
I wonder if this will affect them.
Of course the sponsored ads on the search home page will continue to grow in size, not to mention verticals like mortgage, credit cards, hotels where they have their own competing site as well…the monoploy of google is going to be one of the interesting things to watch over the next 5 years as more industries begin to push back and become more vocal with the government.
I think everyone is missing the point.
If you have to move your ads, you make less money, if you make less money you need to make more money, if you need to make more money you then have to advertise. Where does everyone advertise on the Net? Google.
Google wins, you lose.
Mark my words, a day will come when people start building sites WITHOUT taking Google into consideration. Sites will NOT be made for optimization in Google anymore. Google will be start to be shunned as they keep putting screws to websites and domain owners. People will revolt to this sh*t, once they finally decide they’ve had enough manipulation and can’t stand the frustration of trying to please the master of the Internet.
Here is another take on this:
http://www.seobook.com/spamsense
LOL @ Acro that really gave me a chuckle.
It is quite funny though because AFAIK Google puts so much ads on its results above the fold too, no?
So monetization-wise, if I manage to calculate a way to put very good ads that return a lot of income, I can simply withstand the penalty of being organically searched and buy the top G ad spot with margin for profit.
This is great news and yet another example of why Google is raking in the cash, hand over fist. Who wants landing pages on page 1 of their Goolgle search? Certainly not me.
If you have a good domain, it will sell eventually, assuming you are pricing it reasonably. Unfortunately, it looks like the handwriting is on the wall regarding PPC (it really has been for quite some time).
Thank you Google Team. Your changes make it possible to be seen through all of the junk sites.
Hello Michael,
These changes will hurt the online Ad Market and portends Googles future strategies are leaning towards other technologies and not just Ad revenues.
Gratefully Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Awesome! This will make my site rank better then. Good Google.
i think domain crusher is right, but i see the problem differently.
google is encouraging and even outright paying people to create “content”.
that is not a search engine.
google is not organising the world’s information. they are trying to control the process of its creation. they are attempting to forcibly populate their own database. why?
because most of what they are crawling is garbage. the “dirty little secret” of the crawlable web is that most of it is static, leftover junk from the 1990’s. new “content” appearing on the web is mostly garbage specifically designed to show up in google results, for commercial purposes. “seo”. this is what google has spawned. and it’s now a big fish. they cannot stop this (their algorithm is fundamnetally flawed. it relies on fallible indicia of popularity, or so-called “relevance”: href tags. machines can generate these html tags just as well as any human. and even when humans generate them, the humans might be incapable of separating wheat from chaf. their value as peer-reviewers is negative. end result: garbage search results, at the top.) so, given that they cannot stop this endless creation of garbage, that by virtue of using google’s href-based algorithm, “seo” will never die, they are choosing to do the garbage creation themselves. with a layer of indirection thrown in to obscure it of course. they are contracting others to produce the garbage.
either you can see this happening or you can’t. but either way, it _is_ happening.
eventually, almost all results in google will be from google owned or controlled subsidiaries or contractors. some people notice this happening already.
it may not be self-evident looking to the average user looking at a results page, but a little research will reveal an increasing number of sources of web content (blogs, social networks, travel reservations, restaurant reviews, uploaded videos, etc.) can be traced back to google. but those things are only what is made public. they are also paying contractors to upload content or solicit it from local directories. and much more.
they are propping themselves up. it all goes back to the fact that most of the crawlable web is static, leftovers from the 1990’s. and most of the new “content” is pure “seo” garbage aimed at none other than google, the web’s central portal, a position once held by yahoo. their algorithm, while nice enough in theory, relies on unreliable indicia of popularity (href tags) to rank results. popularity does not equate to relevance. and making counts of href tags does not produce a measure of quality. history has shown this year after year.
and google just has to keep on “changing the algorithm”. but nothing is changing. they are just dealing with the fundamental flaw of their model. it encourages the production of utter crap.
and if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
I have a feeling the biggest offenders will once again get a pass and many small business sites will get a good lashing, but we shall see.
@se-oh,
I feel dumber after reading your rambling, worthless post. Go back to WOW.
Amazing article, @ MHB!
“Left unsaid in such a statement was that until those algorithms rolled out, Google admitted they funded spam. 😉 The whole AdSense & content farm problem was created through incentive structures with unintended consequences.”
– From AdSense to SpamSense to Spam Cents
http://www.seobook.com/spamsense
louise has got it.
incentivising “content”.
the “content” google’s system of incentives promotes is probably not the content that users want. of course if users have no choice, a significant number will still click on whatever they’re given.
whether originally intended or not, google knows now what they are creating. they are making rules for the content farms and they are continuing to pay others, to make/submit such “content”. they are themselves in the content farm business. follow the money.
it’s full speed ahead on garbage “content” creation to go alongside the ads.
thank you google.
To proceed into the brave new web world based on pleasing google is nuts.
I have major concerns that at the end of the” investigation by regulatory agencies day”
there will be a new Sheriff in town, and the rules of search will no longer be the exclusive “domain” of any search engine.
Domain names will matter even more, but only those with a viable relevance to the query
will prevail in high search results.
The whole thing has gotten too complicated anyway.
JMO………..out with the pigeon shit!….Craig
“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.”
I want to apologize for being out of line a bit in my posts above. I can be somewhat challenged when it comes to impulse control and vulgarities and understand that perceptions can run a muck very easily. I never intend to offend, only entertain. I do apologize if I offended anyone.
I don’t like being accused of spamming. I can handle criticism when it is warranted but false accusations piss me off. I digress.
“let the wise guard their thoughts, which are difficult to perceive, extremely subtle, and wander at will. Thought which is well guarded is the bearer of happiness” Buddha
My Buddha Quotes app straightens me out from time to time, haha.