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Pages With Too Many Ads "Above The Fold" Now Penalized By Google's "Page Layout" Algorithm

This post was originally published on http://searchengineland.com. Visit the original here:

http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613

Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm

Jan 19, 2012 at 6:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan

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Do you shove lots of ads at the top of your web pages? Think again. Tired of doing a Google search and landing on these types of pages? Rejoice. Google has announced that it will penalize sites with pages that are top-heavy with ads.

Top Heavy With Ads? Look Out!

The change — called the “page layout algorithm” — takes direct aim at any site with pages where content is buried under tons of ads.

From Google’s post on its Inside Search blog today:

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.

Google also posted the same information to its Google Webmaster Central blog.

Sites using pop-ups, pop-unders or overlay ads are not impacted by this. It only applies to static ads in fixed positions on pages themselves, Google told me.

How Much Is Too Much?

How can you tell if you’ve got too many ads above-the-fold? When I talked with the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, he said that Google wasn’t going to provide any type of official tools similar to how it provides tools to tell if your site is too slow (site speed is another ranking signal).

Instead, Cutts told me that Google is encouraging people to make use of its Google Browser Size tool or similar tools to understand how much of a page’s content (as opposed to ads) is visible at first glance to visitors under various screen resolutions.

But how far down the page is too far? That’s left to the publisher to decide for themselves. However, the blog post stresses the change should only hit pages with an abnormally large number of ads above-the-fold, compared to the web as a whole:

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.

Impacts Less Than 1% Of Searches

Clearly, you’re in trouble if you have little-to-no content showing above the fold for commonly-used screen resolutions. You’ll know you’re in trouble shortly, because the change is now going into effect. If you suddenly see a drop in traffic today, and you’re heavy on the ads, chances are you’ve been hit by the new algorithm.

For those ready to panic, Cutts told me the change will impact less than 1% of Google’s searches globally, which today’s post also stresses.

Fixed Your Ads? Penalty Doesn’t Immediately Lift

What happens if you’re hit? Make changes, then wait a few weeks.

Similar to how last year’s Panda Update works, Google is examining sites it finds and effectively tagging them as being too ad-heavy or not. If you’re tagged that way, you get a ranking decrease attached to your entire site (not just particular pages) as part of today’s launch.

If you reduce ads above-the-fold, the penalty doesn’t instantly disappear. Instead, Google will make note of it when it next visits your site. But it can take several weeks until Google’s “push” or “update” until the new changes it has found are integrated into its overall ranking system, effectively removing penalties from sites that have changed and adding them to new ones that have been caught.

Google’s post explains this more:

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.

Our Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update article explains the situation with Panda, and how it took time between when publishers made changes to remove “thin” content to when they were restored to Google’s good graces. That process is just as applicable to today’s change, even though Panda itself now has much less flux.

Meanwhile, Google AdSense Pushes Ads

Ironically, on the same day that Google’s web search team announced this change, I received this message from Google’s AdSense team encouraging me to put more ads on my site:

This was in relation to my personal blog, Daggle. The image in the email suggests that Google thinks content pretty much should be surrounded by ads.

Of course, if you watch the video that Google refers me (and others) to in the email, it promotes careful placement, that user experience be considered and, at one point, shows a page top-heavy with ads as something that shouldn’t be done.

 

Still, it’s not hard to easily find sites using Google’s own AdSense ads that are definitely pushing content down as far down on their pages as they can or trying to hide it. Those pages, AdSense or not, are subject to the new rules, Cutts said.

Pages Ad-Heavy, But Not Top-Heavy With Ads, May Escape

As a searcher, I’m happy with the change. But it might not be perfect. For example, here’s something I tweeted about last year:

Yes, that’s my finger being used as an arrow. I was annoyed that to find the actual download link I was after was surrounded by AdSense-powered ads telling me to download other stuff.

This particular site was heavily used by kids who might easily click on an ad by mistake. That’s potentially bad ROI for those advertisers. Heck, as net-savvy adult, I found it a challenge.

But the problem here wasn’t that the content was pushed “below the fold” by ads. It was that the ratio of ads was so high in relation to the content (a single link), plus the misleading nature of the ads around the content.

Are Google’s Own Search Results Top Heavy?

Another issue is that ads on Google’s own search results pages push the “content” — the unpaid editorial listings — down toward the bottom of the page. For example, here’s exactly what’s visible on my MacBook Pro’s 1680×1050 screen:

(Side note, that yellow color around the ads in the screenshot? It’s much darker in the screenshot than what I see with my eyes. In reality, the color is so washed-out that it might as well be invisible. That’s something some have felt has been deliberately engineered by Google to make ads less noticeable as ads).

The blue box surrounds the content, the search listings that lead you to actual merchants selling trash cans, in this example. Some may argue that the Google shopping results box is further pushing down the “real content” of listings that lead out of Google. But the shopping results themselves do lead you to external merchants, so I consider them to be content.

The example above is pretty extreme, showing the maximum of three ads that Google will ever show above its search results (with a key exception, below). Even then, there’s content visible, with it making up around half the page or more, if you include the Related Searches area as content.

My laptop’s screen resolution is pretty high, of course. Others would see less (Google’s Browser Size tool doesn’t work to measure its own search results pages). But you can expect Google will take “do as I say, not as I do” criticism on this issue.

Indeed, I shared this story initially with the main details, then started working on this section. After that was done, I could see this type of criticism already happening, both in the comments or over on my Google+ post and Facebook post about the change.

Here’s a screenshot that Daniel Weadley shared in my Google+ post about what he sees on his netbook:

In this example, Google’s doing a rare display of four ads. That’s because it’s showing the maximum of three regular ads it will show with a special Comparison Ads unit on top of those. And that will just add fuel to criticisms that if Google is taking aim at pages top-heavy with ads, it might need to also look closer to home.

NOTE: About three hours after I wrote this, Google clearly saw the criticisms about ads on its own search results pages and sent this statement:

This is a site-based algorithm that looks at all the pages across an entire site in aggregate. Although it’s possible to find a few searches on Google that trigger many ads, it’s vastly more common to have no ads or few ads on a page.

Again, this algorithm change is designed to demote sites that make it difficult for a user to get to the content and offer a bad user experience.

Having an ad above-the-fold doesn’t imply that you’re affected by this change. It’s that excessive behavior that we’re working to avoid for our users.

Algorithms? Signals?

Does all this talk about ranking signals and algorithms have you confused? Our video below explains briefly how a search engine’s algorithm works to rank web pages:

 

Also see our Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors, which explains some of the other ranking signals that Google uses in its algorithm:

Name The Update & More Info

Today’s change is a new, significant ranking factor for our table, one we’ll add in a future update, probably as Va, for “Violation, Ad-Heavy site.”

Often when Google rolls out new algorithms, it gives them names. Last year’s Panda Update was a classic example of this. But Google’s not given one to this update (I did ask). It’s just being called the “page layout algorithm.”

Boring. Unhelpful for easy reference. If you’d like to brainstorm a name, visit our posts on Google+ and on Facebook, where we’re asking for ideas.

Now for the self-interested closing. You can bet this will be a big topic of discussion at our upcoming SMX West search marketing conference at the end of next month, especially on the Ask The Search Engines panel. So check out our full agenda and consider attending.

Related Articles

• It’s Official: Google Now Counts Site Speed As A Ranking Factor
• Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Panda” Algorithm Update
• Why Google Panda Is More A Ranking Factor Than Algorithm Update
•  Taking a Closer Look at the Google’s Panda 2.5 “Flux”
• The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors
• Search Engine Land Guide To SEO
• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Top News

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About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions

This first appeared on the excellent blog of Brian Solis. Please visit here to read the original post:

http://www.briansolis.com/2011/12/2012-social-marketing-new-media-predictions/

After reading Brian's piece, click here for the report he references from Awareness Networks:

http://info.awarenessnetworks.com/rs/awarenessnetworks/images/2012_Predictions.pdf

2012 Social Marketing & New Media Predictions

 

 By Brian Solis

• December 27, 2011
  

Awareness Networks released insights and prognosis from 34 business and marketing leaders as part of its2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictions report. It’s written for marketing strategists, brand marketers and consults and those working in agencies. I think you’ll find it interesting to say the least and perhaps even prescriptive.

Here are a few of my thoughts…

On the evolution of social business:

Companies of all sizes will need to transform their business and existing infrastructure, and reverse engineer the impact of business objectives and metrics. Businesses will have to embrace all of the disruptive elements, such as mobile and social technology, in a new, cohesive organization that is focused outward and inward.

On the subject of Big Data:

No organization, no matter how large or small, is ready for big data from a process, collaboration and innovation perspective. Business Intelligence (BI) is still siloed. In marketing, insights usually are still driven by community managers. Companies will need to centralize BI to feed every aspect of the business – marketing, product, innovation and customer service. Only then will BI help companies transform themselves into true social businesses.

On the migration from monitoring to intelligence:

Capturing information and transforming that information into actionable, measurable insight… This type of insight will not be marketing-driven but market- driven.

On the importance of mobile marketing:

Businesses need to understand if and how their customers use mobile devices, then provide a holistic experience that does not change for users as they navigate websites and mobile applications.

On the challenges facing marketers in 2012:

Recognizing that they are part of the problem. Today, much of what we see is still traditional marketing disguised as social media. It’s still 1-to-many. And, by default, they have created a marketing silo in their organizations. Marketers need to connect the entire organization and put everyone to work for marketing. We need to move to an era of 1-to-1-to-many.

The report also features predictions and observations by some of the industry’s most progressive thinkers and doers:

Errol Apostolopoulos (@errol33), Jay Baer (@jaybaer), David Berkowitz (@dberkowitz), c.c. chapman (@cc_chapman), Robert Collins (@RobertCollins), Stacy Debroff (@MomCentral), Jason Falls (@JasonFalls), Laura Fitton (@Pistachio), Paul Gillin (@PGillin), Neil Glassman (@neilglassman), Matthew T. Grant (@MattTGrant), Doug Haslam (@DougH), Tim Hayden (@TheTimHayden), Bill Ives (@BillIves), Taulbee Jackson (@taulbee), Pamela Johnston (@PamJohnston), Debi Kleiman (@drkleiman), Lora Kratchounova (@ScratchMM), Mark Lazen (@marklazen), Mike Lewis (@bostonmike), Marc Meyer (@Marc_Meyer), Steve Murphy (@SBCMarketing), Jonas Klit Nielsen (@Klit_Nielsen), Michael Pace (@mpace101), Andrew Patterson, Dave Peck (@davepeck), Erik Qualman (@equalman), Steve Rubel (@steverubel), David Meerman Scott (@dmscott), Samuel J. Scott (@samueljscott), Jim Storer (@jimstorer), Michael Troiano (@miketrap), Ekaterina Walter (@Ekaterina)

 

About the Author

Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture. His current book, Engage, is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web.

 

 

ROI, or the art of counting monsters -

Originally posted on BlockbyBlock. Read the original post here: 

 http://www.blockbyblock.us/2012/01/09/roi-or-the-art-of-counting-monsters/#

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Sally Duros

 

 

Next time you’re puzzling over the return on investment, ROI, of advertising for a neighborhood business, first consider the monsters.

“If you look at Facebook as the little monster in the corner you have to feed every day.  And Twitter is another one. And the business’ website is another one. And email is another one,” says Greg Swanson, CEO of Itz Publishing,  a strategic consulting partner for online media, “the neighborhood business  now has 15 monsters in the room.”

“The question is not what is the ROI on each one, it is how the heck do I feed 15 monsters?!”, he says.

A history lesson on small business marketing will clarify why this is relevant to advertising.

In 1990, if you were a small business looking to win customers in your local market, you spent 70% of your total marketing budget buying ads with legacy media — radio, TV and  newspapers. That means you spent the bulk of your money —  $7 out of $10 —  buying the audience from someone else who had one  – i.e. buying ads on radio, TV or in newspapers.

“You were basically renting an audience,“ Swanson says.

The small business spent the other 30% of its marketing budget reaching the audience it had built itself. It used marketing tools that included signage, posters, direct mail, discounts and a few other bells and whistles.

But now it’s 2012, and those numbers have reversed, Sawnson says. Today small businesses are spending only 30% of their total marketing dollars buying ads with a publisher, i.e. renting an audience —   including your website audience. And they are spending 70% of their dollars reaching the audience that they have built themselves.

“70-30. Which means that all media companies — whether you are talking about indy online media or legacy media — are fighting over an ever-shrinking part of the pie,” Swanson says.

The advertising/rental pie is very small.

This has been a 30-to-40 year movement on the part of small business owners, Swanson says.

That’s why Swanson thinks it’s time for local media to find a way to participate with small business owners and help them focus their 70% of self-built marketing dollars.

Today, the flavor-of-the-day for much of that self-built audience includes Facebook, websites, Yelp, Twitter, Groupon and other social sites that small businesses are compelled to participate in.

Using each of these tools poses a slew of questions. For instance, if  a small business works with Groupon, it has bought 1,500 new email addresses. It’s got a new audience to market to as well as a lot of questions. How often should I talk with my audience? What should I say?

In addition, every tool is measured by a different metric, Swanson says.  Social sites count likes, and clicks and views and opens and none of them compare well with each other. Social media marketing consultant Brian Solis has written extensively about this problem and has developed a rough system of measurement.

“The small business owner doesn’t have a clue how to manage this,” Swanson says. “A company like AT&T has highly sophisticated tools for managing social, but if you are the local advertiser, you are blindfolded in a dark room with a dart in your hand throwing it against the wall hoping the dart board is on the wall.”

In short, the small business owner faces more things to do with no greater budget, expertise or time.

That’s why to Swanson’s way of thinking, for the local indy publisher the sweet spot might be to ease the pain for the small business rather than trying to sell on a traditional ROI model.

The indy publisher could say “Let us provide you with a service where you can enter your information once and we will distribute it. And one of the distribution streams will be an ad on our news site.”

And so the ROI quickly morphs.

Though an unproven and controversial idea, Allen D. Mutter, who writes Newsasaur came out in support of the idea of publishers serving as social media managment boutiques in December, citing Forrester Rsearch.

 A recent survey by Forrester Research, the market research company, found that 77% of the mangers of small and medium businesses are concerned about building their social-marketing presence. But nearly all of them say they are so bewildered about what to do and so overwhelmed with the ordinary chores of running their businesses that they want someone to help.

Swanson says that online publishers have an added quandary in that they often choose to sell banner ads – which are outmoded as an advertising model — coupled with selling to a news organization’s demographics. In Swanson’s opinion, neither takes advantage of the true capacity of the Internet to match buyers and sellers, but that’s another tributary we won’t go down just yet.

So as to ROI, how does this add up?

If you are a local publisher trying to sell ads to small business, and this small business conundrum jibes with your experience, you might try to understand the small business marketing mix of “rental” vs. self-build and see how you can work with the business to help maximize its channels, with your news site serving as an included channel.

Some might find following the small business money and easing the pain a more fruitful route than the more traditional path.

Let us know what your experience has been.