Advertising and its effects on Panda - what is the consensus?

[whatson]

Einstein said if you understand something, then you can explain it in one sentence. Therefore my one sentence definition of Panda is: "making better content on the web".

Google understands copywriters, webmasters, programmers, etc, all costs money, and advertising is a major source of revenue of a lot of web sites.

So I was just wondering what is the current consensus on what (if any) effects advertising has to your Panda rank?

[Planet13]

I would say that the top ranking sites in my niche that are independent all do advertising, but not so much adwords. Mostly they do banner advertising on third party sites.

[whatson]

I was talking about actual ad placements on web sites, not the web sites advertising in Adwords.

[tedster]

Google patents going back at least 6-7 years have mentioned looking at the kinds of business that advertise on a site as a signal of how reputable the site itself is. It seems possible to me that Panda could examine who advertises on a site as at least one quality signal.

[whatson]

Ok, then lets just be specific and say Adsense, excessive ads, above the fold, etc. Do people still believe this has some sort of impact on Panda?

[tedster]

It certainly can - I've seen the examples. If the page loads and it's clear that the content is not the point, but rather the layout is pushing people toward the ads, then that page can get a negative Panda score.

The problem is that fixing the situation apparently doesn't lift the negative Panda score, not even the next time that Panda is "run". So clearly, this ad factor is only one of many ingredients in the mix.

[1script]

It certainly can - I've seen the examples. If the page loads and it's clear that the content is not the point, but rather the layout is pushing people toward the ads, then that page can get a negative Panda score.

Which actually brings another related question: would then not showing ads to googlebot (and other non-humans) for the sake of "true ad impression counts" be considered cloaking with the intent to "influence ranking" and cause all the bad consequences of cloaking?

[whatson]

The problem is that fixing the situation apparently doesn't lift the negative Panda score, not even the next time that Panda is "run". So clearly, this ad factor is only one of many ingredients in the mix.

But Tedster, couldn't that equally be viewed as it is not one of the factors in the mix, if making the changes shows no signs of recovery?

[tedster]

Sure, it "could". Except that the top Google engineers described this factor specifically many times. The fact is that recovery no matter what is extremely rare - except when the algorithm changes as it just did in Panda 2.3

I would definitely not overwhelm the content at the top of the page with ads. Even without Panda, I wouldn't do it. It's manipulative nonsense in my view.

Anyone is welcome to do what they want, obviously, but if I visit a page like that, I'm out of there as quick as I can. I'm amazed that the ploy works on some people.

[Lexur]

How to measure advertising? Did you mean graphic links within pure HTML (no javascript)?
Is Google smart enough to see and rank ads rotating in my site?

I think panda is a miserable failure because it tries to mix in the pot too much things the algorithm can't evaluate properly.

[onebuyone]

Excessive advertising will increase bounce rate, reduce time spent on site and page per visit ratio. If you want to rank page with 100 word long article, but visitors are leaving your website after 30 seconds not to mention reading other parts of your website, then probably there is something wrong with your content.
So it doesn't matter what is the reason of bad stats, advertising or some other thing, for Google it's easier to look at final result(the statistics), which reflect some facts about your website.

This is just a wild guess, but that's how I would do this if I was google ;)

[littlegiant]

I think panda is a miserable failure because it tries to mix in the pot too much things the algorithm can't evaluate properly.

Agree 100%. I'm seeing sites with all ads above the fold (and the poorest content once you scroll down) ranking in the top 5 for some high traffic keywords. I don't see how Panda could miss something like that.

[Errioxa]

bad orthography + lot of ads + high bounce rate + lot of content duplicate + many URL with low quality content = signal to Google for the next Panda update revision

[aristotle]

I think onebuyone makes a good point. If, as many believe, Panda measures user satisfaction, then too many ads will indirectly hurt a site because the stats on user behavior will yield a lower quality score.

[whatson]

But the ads themselves will not directly effect a site's Panda ranking. It is the user behavior that the ads create that are affecting it, possibly, assuming that is even a Panda measurement, which I am not sure it is.
Personally I think it was much more basic than that, and has just affected sites with duplicate or thin content.