rango - 9:01 pm on Jul 9, 2012 (gmt 0)

These are [very local] listings. Many small towns only have one option. The ad was a 300x250 block off to the right. So it has three ads inside it.

Later in 2011 we even added more ads (trying to offset some panda losses). These were at the end of results (and formatted similarly). Fine when there's ten, but when there's only one it meant one result + one ad. Plus the ad on the right. Definitely the balance of the page was more ads than not. And there are actually quite lot of little towns with only one property so the percentage of pages with thin / ad filled content did not look good. Or so my theory goes at least.

[edited by: tedster at 9:56 pm (utc) on Jul 9, 2012]