TheMadScientist - 5:44 am on Mar 31, 2011 (gmt 0)

If too high an ad/content ratio is a problem, they could say so.

Hi aaronbaugher,

Glad you joined and I hope you don't think I'm picking on you too much, but this is where the complexity of Google and the 'situationality' (I make up so many more new words these days when I'm talking about Google it's not even funny ... could be defined as 'situational relativity' + 'situational application') of everything they do makes it so that would actually be an incorrect answer (<-- That's important) ... They can't accurately say, 'Oh, well a high ad to content ratio is bad...', because it's not in all situations...

The preceding is one of the things I think people totally miss, often ... It's ALL situational, and it's ALL relative, and imo it's entirely possible ad to content ratio is not high enough for some sites or pages.

To give a 'single answer' like you're wishing for or thinking they can do is not possible with the complexities of the system ... In a 'transaction' or 'shopping' query, a high 'ad to content' ratio would be expected, so it would be completely wrong to tell a shopping site, EG eBay, they need to add more content and have less 'pure sales' pages and pages of links to those sales pages ... People keep looking for some simple answer these days and with the complexity of Google, imo, all answers are site, and even page specific...

Sorry if I'm sounding ranty, but if people want to understand Google better, imo, they have to understand what's right for my site(s) and page(s) is not necessarily right for all sites or pages, so there's no 'one size fits all answer' for everyone to focus on.

In some cases a high ad to content ratio may be bad, but in others it may be good ... A person doesn't look at FleaBay and RankiPedia the same way, and neither do they...

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 5:59 am (utc) on Mar 31, 2011]