Matt Cutts Announces "Above The Fold" Algorithm Launch

[tedster]

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today [19 January] we're launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a web page and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result...

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.

- Matt Cutts

[insidesearch.blogspot.com...]

[bhartzer]

This latest algo launch from Google is yet another reason why I'm going to stick with creating content sites without ads.

[robdwoods]

@bhartzer I think it's fine to create content sites with ads. You just have to be aware of the size, number and placement. I can't imagine that a blog with good content and an ad block at the bottom of the post would be penalized.

If Google was going to penalize sites like that they might as well shut down the content network.

[netmeg]

How about... USE YOUR COMMON SENSE.

Works for me.

[tangor]

Not sure if it is slow to roll out

I believe G learned from the backlash on Panda that too much too soon isn't good for their bottom line and good will perception by the webmaster community (not speaking of us at Webmasterworld, just everybody who operates websites). This time the percent is smaller, less obvious, and probably rolled out in different areas at different times so the perception of "harm" to site income is not as obvious. Chipping away a little is usually much better than a sledgehammer and big chunks.

[netmeg]

I suspect it's been rolling out ever since Panda started, they just might have turned it up to to eleven recently.

[mrez74]

All my sites got hit overnight. All the ones ranking on page 1 have not gone to page 2 and beyond for their keywords. These all use the same theme and have 1 Adsense block above the content. But each site has plenty of content that is unique and informative. I noticed many of the sites in the same niche as mine that have exact match domains and using Adsense got hit as well.

[robdwoods]

I have some fairly ad heavy sites and they were not hit over night. They may either be OK or not part of the 1%. I'm taking prophylactic measures however and tweaking page layouts to help insulate the sites from getting hit. I do believe that the 1% will ramp up significantly over the next few weeks. If you think it could hit you, make the changes now rather than getting hit and then waiting weeks for the penalty to "maybe" be lifted.

[rlange]

HuskyPup wrote:
That's how I read it...one would have thought that IF they can identify this 1% then surely the logical thing to do would be to advise those sites?

There are over 196 million (196,000,000) active domains; 1% of that is nearly 2 million. It's not exactly reasonable to inform each of those sites individually. Granted, it's not likely that all of those domains are indexed by Google, but it would still be a very large number.

However, all of that is irrelevant because this change affects 1% of searches, not 1% of websites. There are apparently around 3 billion (3,000,000,000) searches done on Google, globally, per day. Since 1% of that is 30 million (30,000,000) searches and each search encompasses a constantly shifting set of multiple websites, the task becomes even more unreasonable.

Slashus wrote:
Lets hope the kid that cures cancer doesn't try to monetize too much or he'll be on the second page and pandalized.

I don't think the kid that cures cancer is going to be too worried about monetizing their website. Of course, I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of natural backlinks they would get for that achievement would more than drown out a poor design decision.

--
Ryan

[universetoday]

This is one of those situations where it would be nice to get some coordination from the Adsense advisors pushing you into more and more agressive placement. A quick heads up would be in order.

Anyway, I made changes to my site to make things less top heavy, and it's a big hit on CTR. I'll probably switch to a CPM banner network at this point.

[tedster]

@universetoday - did you notice a ranking drop on the 19th which you feel came from this new algorithm component? Or are you just being "protective in advance"?

I agree that there seems to be a disconnect between these two Google teams - has been for a long time.

[Slashus]

rlange wrote:
Of course, I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of natural backlinks they would get for that achievement would more than drown out a poor design decision.

I hear you Ryan. And right after that kid is out of the Google sandbox for getting too many links too fast, we'll all grow old together...

I'm just being overly cynical, nvm me.

[ken_b]

Adsense advisors pushing you into more and more agressive placement.

The last time I talked to a member of the AdSense Optimization team the AdSense person did say (when asked specifically) that too many ads above the fold might affect ranking in the serps.

That was a couple months ago.

.

[graeme_p]

Unless the hit my site took is a complete coincidence, a single large above the fold ad is enough.

I have lost most of my 1st places in the UK SERPS, and the sites that have moved up are Wikipedia (no ads) and a site with internally served ads so I think one way to avoid this may be to sell ads directly rather than use a network.

[potentialgeek]

> a single large above the fold ad is enough.

How large? 336 x 280?

[Seb7]

Wondering if it has anything to do with Facebook putting a massive banner on millions of profiles (oops.. timeline)

[universetoday]

@tedster - I don't think I was hit, but I'd need more days to confirm. Friday's search traffic was essentially the same as last week's.

So, I'm being cautious and using my common sense. The old placement was too agressive, and the new one is better.

It's just that the new one suffers a 25% drop in CTR.

[micklearn]

The last time I talked to a member of the AdSense Optimization team the AdSense person did say (when asked specifically) that too many ads above the fold might affect ranking in the serps.

So, the teams do interact, then?

[Donna]

I was just checking "random website" for some plane tickets , I do it every week and just noticed the new change ..... is this what we going to expect from webmasters under google's pressure ? Its just pathetic ! I noticed this on few others big websites, all the content is to the left and not centered anymore. I have been talking about content zoning since 3-4 months now since I noticed some weird stuff around and I can promise you this "update" has been in effect for a while now.

[edited by: Donna at 7:38 am (utc) on Jan 21, 2012]

[jinnguyen]

"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"

Who's believe in this quote? I don't, what kind of users are those? Not the webmasters of course. Even if it's true then where to send the feed back and have some real human review it?

[Rockyou]

Don't listen to Matt Cutts he is waste of time, If Google changes its algo, what you think they will tell you & do? You got be stupid to think that way.

[cj2600]

One of my sites was hit on 19th. Today (Friday) I lost about 30-40% of visitors compare to last Friday.

About my site.
It's a WP blog about 750px wide.
Here's what I had above the fold.
1. 728x15 link unit just below the blog title and description.
2. 468x15 banner after the first paragraph. Displayed only on single pages.
3. Google search box in the right sidebar.

Below the fold:
336x228 unit at the end of the post.

All post have very unique content with lots of pics and description. Most post have hundreds and even thousands of comments from people (not stupid spammers) saying thank you for a very useful content.

Do I have too much ads? Not reasonable?

By the way, just yesterday I received an email from AdSense team saying: "You’re missing #*$! opportunities to earn more". What a joke!

[dhaliwal]

for many reasons, i don't believe in what Matt Cutts has said (even in the past).

[graeme_p]

@potentialgeek, yes a 336x280.

It is the first large fall in traffic I have had in three years, and it came right on the day of the announcement, so I am inclined to attribute it to the change.

The announcement says that less than 1% of searches will be "noticeably" affected. A page of results that is only slightly different to a visitor, may be very significant to a site that has slipped a place or two down the page. 1% of searches could mean a lot more than 1 % of sites.

I would also be interested in knowing if this is completely rolled out or still going on, and whether there is any indication of what effect space taken up by things that are neither ads or main content has.

[nickreynolds]

There is a problem here with lack of definition of "content".
It seems that the feel of the article is saying it's content versus ads. If we read "content" as text, then most sites have got a lot of stuff above the fold that doesn't fit into those two categories (navigation, nice graphics that make your site attractive to the user, video etc)
If we could trust Google, we probably agree that there are sites overloaded with ads where it's difficult to distinguish where the text is and very little is above the fold. Most of us are not worried about those sites being hit. Our fear is that Google is not very accurate in it's targetting eg Panda) and we fear that we'll be hit in the collateral damage.

[ErnestHemingway]

Guys but is it just me or sometimes Google spams 4 ads on the top? I guess it is giving good experience. I guess it does? Google is really the Lion of the jungle now.

[alika]

Got hit on the 19th. About 50% drop in traffic for our main site, which went live in 1999.

Above the fold contains the following:

- Header (logo on the left, 486x60 on the right)
- Leaderboard
- Left narrow column: first thing is an Adlinks, then button ad
- Center column: featured article
- Right wide column: first thing is an Sponsored Link, followed by a medium rectangle

Which is what many sites have. We're not like the "extreme website with 90% of ads." The difference, however, is that ours is a butt-ugly site. It was made in Frontpage -- and continues to be updated in Frontpage. No CSS. No prettiness. I'm not a programmer or web developer so loads of HTML errors.

We haven't updated it because it works for us. It earns a lot of advertising revenues. So we were in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mode.

Plus, it gets a lot of mentions -- our articles have been cited several times in New York Times, Washington Post and other leading publications. We got links even from the Department of State. At one point, it even got a PR7. So this is not the "sludge of the Web" type of site. But it is ugly.

The irony is that we are planning to move it to Wordpress this year, and I've started moving a few of the content already.

If we are indeed hit by this algorithm, then we need to move our timetable quicker and get everything done sooner than we had planned.

[mhansen]

@ Alika -

If I were in your position, I would hold off on the WordPress update, until AFTER you correct the ads issue. At least then, you'll be dealing with one set of issues at a time, versus wondering if you lost relevance due to ads, wordpress, or something else.

Matt stated that the algo learns or re-ranks on subsequent visits, so I would suggest removing some of your ads first, let your traffic recover, then deal with the updating at a later date. Maybe, wait a full 2-3 months AFTER recovery, before muddying the waters with a site makeover...

Thats just me though.

MH

[nomis5]

To balance it out, virtually all pages on all my sites have a 336 x 280 ATF - occasionally a 300 x 250. None have been hit.

My experience is that there is a % or two of websites who have 80% of ATF stuffed full of ads. To my thinking Google are going after them and Google have my 100% support if that is the case.

[alika]

Thanks @mhansen - I think that's a wise plan

Our original plan was to move the site section by section. So I've started with one section first. The idea was to change that one section, then study the impact in terms of user engagement and ad revenues. If things look good, then we move to other sections of the site. I had originally planned the whole thing to be about 4-6 months of work.

I'll clean up the homepage first.

[londrum]

that might not work because doesn't panda downgrade the whole site? if google thinks part of your site is still lousy, then even your new improved bits might get punished

[alika]

I have 10,000+ static pages. Unless I employ an army of workers, I can't possibly move all of the whole site to Wordpress over the weekend.

Since the move involves fixing the whole taxonomy of the site, entailing changes in categories and URLs, I still want to do it section by section and not shock Google furthermore with URL changes of 10,000+ pages.

We were hit by Panda in Feb and got out in the summer - doing nothing. We just went on continuing to put out more content and developing direct and referral traffic

[tristanperry]

My site's are fine above the fold. Can't say the same about Google's SERPs, though.

[Reno]

There's only a small handful of people here who criticize Google as much as I do (and rightly IMO!), but I can't find fault with the notion that the most valuable & meaningful content should be top, front & center (or "above the fold" to use their parlance). It just makes sense to me that they would want to encourage that sort of design, and in fact, from the point that I started building websites in the mid-90's, before Google existed, that was the advice from the most accomplished webmasters of that day. I read it plenty times: Put your most important content at the top, and put your most important words/ideas at the front of your paragraphs. I just wish it had more weight in the algo, as I've been trying to do that from the gitgo, and still I took a massive hit from Panda. I'll see if MC's latest pronouncement does me any good ~ I doubt it, but I'll hold onto a shred of hope.

Addendum: Is Google very often an example of "Do as we say, not as we do?" Yeah, they probably are, but that doesn't discount the value of having quality content up top. That notion stands on its own, with or without Google.

..............................

[londrum]

is it google's job to judge what is good site design though? might they be in danger of chucking out the baby with the bath water?

there is no real way to judge the quality of the content by looking at where the ads are positioned. in fact, its impossible.

that google blog entry specifically says "[If the first part of the website] 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."

so what happens if a site moves their above-the-fold ads to the bottom instead, and leaves the rest the same. presumably they would no longer fall foul of google's new rule, and yet -- as far as the user is concerned -- the actual page content is indentical. its the same text, same words, same images. it hasn't changed at all. but one layout gets punished and the other doesn't? its nuts. google are punishing the design, not the content. how can they not lose a few good sites along the way?

[JCKline]

I use CSS to place ads within the content, so the HTML code has the ads above the content, yet it's not rendered this way and Google won't see it way. The thought of having to change 100's of pages because of this is not exciting. I'll just wait and see.

[Planet13]

I use CSS to place ads within the content, so the HTML code has the ads above the content, yet it's not rendered this way and Google won't see it way.

Let us know how it goes, because it will be interesting to find out exactly how google is determining the appearance of the page, whether by searching the code or by some sort of "visual" rendering of the appearance of the page.

[Robert Charlton]

its the same text, same words, same images. it hasn't changed at all. but one layout gets punished and the other doesn't? its nuts. google are punishing the design, not the content. how can they not lose a few good sites along the way?

IMO, that's one of the reasons they made this announcement so public and so specific. This isn't about secret sauce... and it's not about punishment. This is about user experience that Google wants to improve. Google needs to be concerned about the satisfaction of its own users, and I think they've discovered that searchers don't like interacting with sites that are ad-heavy up at the top.

So Google is making this algo-change public enough that those sites with good content, which they'd rather not lose, might have a good idea what to fix. It's likely also that Google will be taking a closer look at the kinds of sites that this set of algo changes affects, to further calibrate its own algorithm in this area. Google will probably be further comparing sites with large blocks of ads, vs sites with large images, vs sites with lines of small ads intertwined with internal navigation, etc etc.

Panda is a statistical algorithm, and Google is using it to look at user behavior, at what kinds of decisions users make and where and when they make them. Google will further refine the algo, factor by factor over time. Examining above-the-fold behavior in isolation will help Google get more granular with regard to it changes in the above-the-fold area.

Changing the ads on your site won't automatically fix your rankings, though, if, say, you don't have good content or if your backlinks are weak... but it may keep you from getting filtered out if you know that other things are OK. If you've got some big images that you feel help the user experience, I'd say keep them. If these big images are helping the user, Google should ultimately sort that out.

On the other hand, I've seen sites overloaded with so many big images that haven't been optimized for the web that pages took 15-seconds to load on DSL. Loading speed is another factor, but these things do interrelate. Here's where you have to have both some knowledge and the courage of your convictions. If you build your site with an eye towards relevant, good quality content and good user experience, you will develop some self-awareness about a site's strengths and weaknesses that should guide you. But this is by no means easy.

Google has made other changes, not specifically announced, in this same period, which might also adversely affect your rankings. I'm thinking that I'm currently seeing changes probably related to backlink quality and/or user engagement on the site... but that's only a guess, and these factors might apply differently on different kinds of sites.

[tedster]

but one layout gets punished and the other doesn't? its nuts. google are punishing the design, not the content.

They are trying to address poor user experience, and it seems to me like it's been done with a very gentle touch.

When it comes to the web, layout and content have a potent interaction.

how can they not lose a few good sites along the way?

That certainly might happen - always a chance with any automated algo. But so far it doesn't seem like false positives to any noticeable degree.

I think it's really important not to borrow trouble here - we're mostly fine with just filing this information in the "no action needed" box. Except for sites that intentionally bury their content toward the bottom of the page, of course. Those folks may need to do some redesigning in the direction of helping their visitors rather than playing "hide the content".

[potentialgeek]

Is anyone getting hit who had ads in the right column or just center of the page (above the fold)?

[londrum]

i think google are going down the wrong path here. a good analogy would be in choosing a wife. imagine that google is a dating site. people are looking for a woman with a brain and a personality. but google has put all the ones with buck teeth (ie. ads above the fold) at the back of the queue. and given all the dumb blondes a boost to frontpage.

blondes might give a better user experience, sure, but at the end of the day blonde hair is a superficial thing. like ad placement. people are more interested in the other stuff.

(thats where my analogy falls down... because most men would prefer the blonde!)

[Robert Charlton]

I think that in the early iterations of Panda, Google was looking at an entire range of factors. They most probably decided that ads above the fold were one factor worth looking at in more detail. Perhaps there were ambiguities or uncertainties in the results they found.

This iteration is just about those above-the-fold factors. They've already decided about the brains a long time ago. They may then combine refinements from this iteration back into the overall algo, to see if the ads are still a deal breaker.

Google isn't just depending on its own preconceived notions, btw. It's testing those, and is looking at user behavior, and maybe trying to send some otherwise good sites a big hint about something that needs fixing... sort of like trying to tell someone that they have bad breath.

PS - It's very likely that the affected sites really don't have that much good content. If they did, why would they be hiding it?

[londrum]

but if you look at all the things they've been pushing recently -- page speed, big brands, ad placement etc, its all blonde hair kind-of stuff. that want to push all the well-known and pretty pages to the top. the kind of pages that users are comfortable with.

i think they are trying to become the "comfortable jumper" of search engines. they might not push forward the best results from the farthest reaches of the web anymore (not when every search returns wikipedia amazon youtube blah blah), but what they do serve up will likely do the job

[flatfile]

Well, if Google's users happen to be non-thinkers and these non-thinkers are satisfied when pretty content is above the fold. Then it would make sense for Google to show sites which have this pretty content.

[robert76]

I don't see a lot of discussion concerning ecommerce as far as the above the fold algorithm change goes. Many sites, including the big one, are not content oriented above the fold. It's typically photo, name, price, and add to cart button. In fact, on the big one, I go down two folds before I get into product description but could be because of my monitor settings.

Is this more of just an adwords/advertisements issue above the fold, or would this normal ecommerce design be in jeopardy? To me, an ecommerce product page is an advertisement although possibly not what this algorithm change was after.

[Reno]

From a user POV, using a high speed connection and reasonably up-to-date computer (Win7), I have had enough of junk pages that are full of slow loading graphics, slow loading ads, that start sound whether I want it or not, that won't let me use my back button (locking me into their site unless I go to History and pull down 2 or 3 places), etc etc. Yeah, they may have some decent content somewhere, but the aggravation factor outweighs any value they offer. So if Google can push those sites down and allow other sites, where the user experience is more pleasant, to move higher, then I'm all for it.

And in any case, I don't think it's an "either / or" situation ... either sites have good content but it's always below the fold, or they have mediocre content and it's above the fold. There is absolutely no reason why, in most cases, the "prime meat" of the page cannot be close to the top ~ as I said in my previous post, that advice has been around for at least 15 years, if not longer.

So if Google can help make my own personal user experience more enjoyable, then in this instance I sing their praises.

......................

[koan]

it is a bit crazy. does "the godfather" suddenly become a worse film when it's on the telly, because its got ad breaks?

Yes, it does become a worse film. Imagine there's a TV guide agent that helps you find what you desire. Say you're in the mood to watch a gangster movie and you search for "mafia". Two channels show Godfather. One channel as ads interruption every 5 minutes, the other has ad interruptions every 30 minutes. Knowing this, the intelligent TV program ranks the one with less interruptions first because it knows it will deliver a better film experience. That's his job, and users are more than happy with that line of thinking and continue using that intelligent TV guide over other less sophisticated ones who can just scan titles and movie genres but can't figure out that there are other elements for a quality movie experience.

[deadsea]

This is the first algo change that his hit one of my sites big since 1997. My main site lost 30-40% of traffic. I fell from #1 to #6 or #7 to some big keywords.

The site has two adsense blocks above the fold. 728x15 link bar and 336x280 large box. It also has almost all the content above the fold. Most users don't have to scroll down at all.

I've long thought that the 728x15 unit was a bit spammy, bit it was hard to argue with the revenue that it brought in. If that traffic comes back without it, it isn't worth having.

[potentialgeek]

> The site has two adsense blocks above the fold. 728x15 link bar and 336x280 large box. It also has almost all the content above the fold. Most users don't have to scroll down at all.

Is the 336x280 ad on the right or in the middle?

[graeme_p]

I wonder if anyone else affected uses in text ad links (I use Vibrant).

[graeme_p]

@alika if your site has any consistency in its structure you should be able to write a script to import it into the database rather than do it manually. I have done it in the past.

You could also write a script to change the HTML.

You say you are not a developer, but you could probably hire one at a reasonable rate as this is not a huge job - much cheaper than manually moving 10,000 pages.

Why do you need to change the taxonomy of the site? Unless the new structure offers a real improvement, you should retain what you have. Can you move to a CMS now, but change the structure later

[lucy24]

Many sites, including the big one, are not content oriented above the fold. It's typically photo, name, price, and add to cart button. In fact, on the big one, I go down two folds before I get into product description but could be because of my monitor settings.

Isn't that begging the question? Not just you. Half the people in this thread are assuming that "content" means text. The other half are assuming it means "anything other than advertising". Does anyone know?

[Thaparian]

My site had authority ranking for more than two years now and I lost the rankings (sitewide), 2-10 places down on 19th January 2012.

My site has a blog layout, 70px header, main content (650px) on the left and two sidebars on the right. I had 336 unit (above the fold) in main content area, float to the right side. And in one sidebar, two 160 units.

Is that a lot of advertisement?

I now replaced 336 unit with a 300 one, and on many inner pages removed the 336 block. Google hasn't crawled my site since the changes were made. Should I be removing more ads, I already see a decline in CTR.

Also, does Google penalize specific pages or the whole site?

[Reno]

Half the people in this thread are assuming that "content" means text. The other half are assuming it means "anything other than advertising". Does anyone know?

Ah, now we get back to the basis of my general complaint about Panda and it's aftermath. Speaking for myself, and raising the same issue I've raised here no doubt way too many times, I've never seen an official Google explanation of "quality content" (which we've been led to believe is a Panda priority), much less their view on regular "content". I'm taking it to mean mostly text with supporting graphics, though I can see lots of circumstances where it would be graphics with supporting text.

Whatever it means, if their past behavior is any indication of what we can expect, we almost certainly won't see anything from MC or anyone else clarifying all that. They seem to throw these hand grenades out from time to time, but never tell us where they're going to roll.


...............................

[shri]

@universetoday - did you notice a ranking drop on the 19th which you feel came from this new algorithm component?

We lost a lot of rankings on the 19th on a site that had three adsense units above the fold.

Our ranks have been solid for the last couple of years on this site.

Unique content (maintained by a Hollywood script writer .. ) and pretty engaging in my opinion as we average about 5-6 pageviews per visitor and the bounce rate is usually 30-40%. Dwell time was and remains about 3 mins per user.

There is one page which answers a specific question and the bounce rate on that page is about 90% - to be honest, I don't care much about that page anyways as it does not add much value to the site other than give us exposure within this niche.

Unfortunately this has happened right as we go into what is usually a high revenue month for us in Feb.

Have made some tweaks (moved the ads a fair bit, although we do see the leaderboard and the other units above the folks - there is a fair bit of content there too ) - lets see how well Google responds. Hopefully this is not a long term filter and something that ensures that the penalty is revaluated on a weekly or per crawl basis.

Time will tell ....

[deadsea]

potentialgeek: the 336x280 box is on the left, content is on the right.

I've removed the 728x15 link bar sitewide. That will be a 22% ad revenue hit, but that's better than a 30-40% traffic hit. I'm hoping the penalty won't apply with a single 336x280 above the fold.

[rollinj]

Nice point, Marshall.

Screen resolution plays a massive factor, however I assume they will simply use the ratios of screen resolutions that they find to be common from all of the information we freely give them by using google analytics.

[cr1t1calh1t]

I can't remember where, but I read that the googlebot is basically chrome. The article focused on how it could now render and crawl javascript and ajax - but this would play right into the above the fold changes.

Does anyone know the screen resolution of the googlebot?

This is only the beginning with above the fold and other visual factors. If google can show show a user different results based on their connection speed, then they can show different results to users based on their screen resolution.

[HuskyPup]

@rlange

It's not exactly reasonable to inform each of those sites individually.

And why not? If they are so confident that their systems and analyses (correct spelling) are so accurate then they surely have the ability to inform those they deem to be of lesser quality?

<snip>

[edited by: goodroi at 3:58 pm (utc) on Jan 22, 2012]
[edit reason] Let's keep the discussion on-topic and professional [/edit]

[tedster]

Does anyone know the screen resolution of the googlebot?

Googlebot does not have a screen - it retrieves the source code from servers, which is then processed by the various algorithm components.

It seems clear from the screen resolution tool that Google now publishes that they are considering various screen resolutions in this new change. But no, they haven't said exactly how.

We lost a lot of rankings on the 19th on a site that had three adsense units above the fold.

It sure sounds like you are affected by this change, both from the timing and the characteristics of your layout. Please keep us posted bout this, shri - any changes you make as well as ranking shifts that happen.

[graeme_p]

@deadsea, I also had a 336x280 on the left with content on the right. It was not a site on which visitors had to scroll to see content, except on very small screens (say 400 pixels wide or lower) which suggests that Google is targeting that.

My main loss is of a many first or second places in the SERPs places to Wikipedia and/or a competitor whose ads are lower down the page.

I have replaced it with a skyscraper lower down the page. Now to wait for Google to re-crawl the pages.

This is the first time I am changing a site to suit an algo change, and it does not feel right - when I have lost ground before I have waited a few weeks and my losses have reversed, but in this case it looks needed.

[potentialgeek]

> potentialgeek: the 336x280 box is on the left, content is on the right. I've removed the 728x15 link bar sitewide. That will be a 22% ad revenue hit, but that's better than a 30-40% traffic hit. I'm hoping the penalty won't apply with a single 336x280 above the fold.

> deadsea, I also had a 336x280 on the left with content on the right.

The only way I can see that differs from conventional sites is their ads of the same size are on the right, not the left. I'd bet the link bar isn't offending Google's algo, just the 336 location. Otherwise Google would have to target every site with 336s on the top right, which isn't going to happen, IMO.

Any ad on the left side, I imagine, is risky.

[londrum]

how can screen resolution come into it?

if the ad ratio is okay for a 1024 res, but not okay for a 800 res (which is easily possible), are they going to mark the 1024 res down too? there would be no reason for it.

so they'd have to show different SERPs for people using different resolutions, which isnt going to happen.

if they're going to mark sites down for this, then it would have to be on a ratio of the entire page. that is how their bot would see it as well

[cr1t1calh1t]

@tedster - I don't think they're considering each searcher's screen size, at least not yet, but rather the lowest common denominator, or at least an average or 'typical' screen resolution that they've determined. My reasoning for this is based on:

1. It looks like sites with top left placement of the largest ad units (336x280) are getting hit particularly hard (I know - very small sample size, anecdotal, ...)
2. My site has a top-left 336x280 ad unit, and over 85% of my visitors have a screen width of 1024 or greater, which leaves lots of content above the fold.

I know this is thin, and I have to remember that this above-the-fold change is only one factor in many. Sites that aren't as strong in other ranking factors and/or ranking well against other less than competitive sites, will probably get hit harder on the ATF factor than otherwise...

What is the mobile browser width on the typical android phone?

@potentialgeek - maybe it is time to do exactly the opposite of what Adsense suggests, as here is their advice for optimizing your placement: "Higher placement is better than lower and left is better than right." Source: [support.google.com ].

cr1t1calh1t

[ken_b]

Any ad on the left side, I imagine, is risky.

I wondered about that when this thread first started.

But I've got a bunch of pages with a 160x600 right under the site logo in the left column and a 120x600 in the right column right under a site nav button. There is a 728x90 leaderboard at the top of the page [above the logo and nav bar].

So far tose pages are doing fine. Maybe they just haven't got to me yet.

On the other hand, when talking to the AdSense Optimizer person about those pages they mentioned the right hand 120x600 as the ad to (re)move if any.

On pages where I don't have ads in the left column they suggested moving the skyscraper from the right column to the left column.

My biggest group of pages has the leaderboard at the top of the page above the Logo and nav bar. The in the left column there is the H1 followed by a short paragraph of text, then a 160x90 adlinks unit the more text. In the center column is an image followed by a 300/336x250/280 adblock then another image (on some pages). Then some boiler plate disclaimers etc.

Then in the right hand column I have more site nav. The pages in this section are getting more traffic. The rest of the site is stable as far as traffic goes.

Maybe I've just been beaten so far down by Panda that they are leaving me alone... :)

I'm waiting for a while to see what happens before I make any changes.

I do actively manage the ad to content ratio on my pages though.

The 728x90 stays on all pages, but how many other ads appear depends on how much content is on that particular page. That sounds like a pain, but I build all my pages manually and the ads are in the template, I just delete the ads when I think it is appropriate.

[Marshall]

Isn't that begging the question? Not just you. Half the people in this thread are assuming that "content" means text. The other half are assuming it means "anything other than advertising". Does anyone know?

Draw your own conclusions from this.

The e-commerce site I manage for one of my clients was generally ranked in the top five SERPS before Panda. The design of the site has not changed much over the years and the site has been active for 12 years.

Layout:
Top 20px - Link to Mobile Friendly version, Client Login and Cart Contents Summary
Next 150px - Header with title being the product on the page
Next 42px - Dynamic Horizontal Navigation by product type
Then main body:
Left column, 150px - Search Box & Navigation by brand
Center, about 700px - Product - Picture, description, price, add to cart button
Right, about 180px - On-site promotions, SSL certificate
Then footer.

There are no ads on this site yet it went from the top five to, in some cases, page 5.

There is absolutely nothing "above the fold" that should have any negative impact as to "content." The "content," that being the product, is only 212px from the body top. In fact, there is nothing on the pages that is not related to the pages or site.

Bottom line: I don't believe anything Google says and that they are trying to make everyone dance to their tune. And I will repeat, especially for e-commerce sites, if you don't advertise on Google, you don't rank well in SERPS regardless what you have above the fold.

Marshall

[Play_Bach]

> And I will repeat, especially for e-commerce sites, if you don't advertise on Google, you don't rank well in SERPS regardless what you have above the fold.

One of the sites I manage is doing just fine on Google. We don't advertise.

[tedster]

I agree with Play_Bach. Most of my small to medium clients are ranking well but they do not advertise on Google now and they never have. It takes just a small amount of research to disprove any connection like that.

There are a multitude of ranking factors and we don't know the full recipe for how they combine. This algorithm change is, so far, not having all that big an impact, even if it is causing concern for some.

We are not being lied to when some new change is publicized. At this point we even get a monthly article for all the changes that Google launched in the past month - and so far, it's a pretty big list for one month's work. We just don't get an exact recipe book, and it's become so complex that a true reverse engineering isn't likely.

[brinked]

from the looks of it...I would assume this would only effect websites that display an overwhelming amount of ads stacked from the top which would make it very hard to find the content down below.

I do not know why this is even being mentioned, this should have been a factor long ago, if not at the least should have been bundled with panda.

[lucy24]

so they'd have to show different SERPs for people using different resolutions, which isnt going to happen.

Why wouldn't it happen? Detecting screen resolution is a heck of a lot less complicated than all those other factors they do take into account.

[g1smd]

I have an interest in this.

I'm currently looking at a site that has the company banner at the very top of the page, a thin navbar below and then the standard breadcrumb trail. Next there's a huge graphic showcasing each product. Finally, all text is well below the fold, and the bottom of the page contains a box with more navigation links in.

The site has just been converted from using flash graphics to using CSS and jquery. Additionally thousands of HTML coding errors were fixed, massive duplicate content issues were resolved, a huge amount of broken internal links fixed, titles added where missing and the site URLs changed to extensionless. The canonical tag and a bunch of redirects also feature highly.

The new site launches in a few days. Visually it looks little different to the old site. Coding wise it's a huge change. The site does not run any third-party ads whatsoever.

I am interested to see what happens. Traditionally the site should do much better, but with the latest Google changes I am wondering how much the huge graphic will hold it back.

Previews in SERPs currently show a grey box where the flash graphic resides. It will be interesting to see how quick that changes and what effect on SERPs and traffic there will be. With all the other changes it might be hard to tell how much the site is being held back. What is especially worrying is that Google might consider the site changes are in response to their updated system. In fact, work started several months ago primarily to make the site mobile-friendly and to undo the mess inflicted by some previous SEO company.

[edited by: g1smd at 10:30 pm (utc) on Jan 22, 2012]