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...]

[speedshopping]

Has anyone reported any site that has recovered from the page layout algo on Jan 19th following ad change and recache?

[deadsea]

My site has not recovered, despite drastic ad changes.

Before: 728x15 below header, 336x280 to the left of the content.
Now: 300x250 to the right of the content

I've lost 30-40% of my traffic and 50% of my ad revenue on the remaining traffic. There is no way that you could say that the ads are in any way obscuring the content on my site now. I'm hoping Googlebot gets its act together and reclassifies my pages quickly. On the other hand, I'm beginning to think the algorithm isn't measuring the ad to content ratio properlry on my site.

[netmeg]

I expect that it'll take a while to recover (as with anything Google, it usually does)

[robzilla]

Today's Alertbox on "chrome" in user interface design seems relevant: [useit.com...]

[sem4u]

One of my sites seems to have suffered a -20 style penalty for one keyphrase. The page has a large ad (not Adsense), which I have now removed. I am just waiting for the page to become cached again to see if the ranking returns.

[Gimp]

Is video condidered content? For example, is a video sales presntation above the fold content? Is a youtube video covering something like "today's" weather above the fold or content?

[graeme_p]

I have concluded that the drop in my rankings was not caused by the single large ad at the top.

I changed the ad about 10 days ago, my site should be completely recrawled (according to the crawl rate in webmaster tools) every day or two, so there should be some improvement by now.

The SERPS seemed to have changed for other reasons. In my niche the general pattern seems to be that small niche sites have lost to big sites.

[FrostyMug]

I was also affected on Jan 19th. Steady 25k unique daily visitors for many years went down to 15k. Tough loss, also 65% down in revenue. Site was never touched by Panda, only grew year after year.

I too had a LOT of ads above fold, following past years urging to have 3 ads on page. Completely my fault.

I redesigned in about 2 weeks, all ads above fold gone, others are pushed down, lots of good content is now back on top where ads used to be. Also aligned site to left. It was aligned center and looked horrible in browser size tool when I previewed it right after Jan 19th hit. 99% area was just site header and ads, NOTHING else, not one word of content.

No recovery whatsoever. I see pages ranking above me where I used to be #1. Googlebot has re-indexed most of the site. My plan - to continue to update and add more content.

[Donna]

Also aligned site to left. It was aligned center and looked horrible in browser size tool when I previewed it right after Jan 19th hit.

Why would you do that, it will look horrid and unprofessional. Do you really think that tool is for real ?

[sem4u]

My site that was affected has now been cached. The cache date says 1st February, but I have not noticed that until now, and I have been checking most days. Ten places have been recovered for my main keyphrase. Again I will wait to see if the ranking comes back to previous levels.

[zeus]

I have a site I dont pay that much attention to it has 6 banners at top, no change at all in ranking

[alika]

Does this algorithm penalizes your whole network of sites?

My main site is ugly, that much I concede.

But two other sites using Wordpress with solid aesthetics were also hit the same time as my main site.

One site only has a leaderboard above the fold, featured content slider, and the signup newsletter box. No 468x60 banner and other ad above the fold; under the signup newsletter box is a medium rectangle which is not that visible above the fold for many browsers. It cannot even be remotely considered as stuffed with ads that pushes down the content below the fold.

Another site also has a leaderboard, but has a 468x60 banner next to the logo.

Does this mean I should stop using leaderboards?

Will the recovery of the two Wordpress sites hinge on the recovery of the main site?

[Dlocks]

Two online flash game websites I own with two 336x280 above the fold and the actual game below those two ads seems to be hit by this change.

Steady unique visitors (15,000/day) in the past years but since jan 20th I lost 50% of my traffic.

So I was searching for SERP changes and found this topic.

I will change my layout and update here if it has any effect.

[speedshopping]

We can't be 100% sure yet (because we have been yo-major yo'ing for the past 6 months) but after google recaching 66% of our 450k page site without adverts, we recovered this morning - still trying to work out whether its a re-evaluation of page layout or our constant yo-yo.

[robzilla]

I will change my layout and update here if it has any effect.

Did you learn your lesson, though? Did you think this would be a good experience for your visitors?

[Thaparian]

I've had most of my website re-crawled (95%) but still a few pages yet to be crawled. They had too many ads before. My site haven't recovered yet. I read this somewhere:

"It should also be noted that the new page layout algorithm punishes entire websites for placing too many ads above the fold, even if there’s just one offending page."

Is it true?

[Thaparian]

I have a site I dont pay that much attention to it has 6 banners at top, no change at all in ranking

What is the size of those banners? Are those banners sitewide?

[Dlocks]

Did you learn your lesson, though? Did you think this would be a good experience for your visitors?

I'm not making websites for my visitors, I make websites to earn money and rank high in serps to get visitors. If I was making websites for visitors I should remove all ads. :)

I have learned that by placing two ads above a Flash game instead of below made me in the past five years about 4 times more money.

Worked great in the past years but now I have to follow new rules (I don't have a problem with that).

[marycontrary]

< moved from another location >

Does this [above the fold algorithm] apply just to sites with ads? Does this apply to regular ecommerce sites with no ads?

[edited by: tedster at 5:52 pm (utc) on Feb 14, 2012]
[edit reason] moved from annother location [/edit]

[guggi2000]

Site traffic was hit on January 19 by 40%. The hit was by 40% on ALL pages, so it seems it was a sitewide hit. We had plenty of Ads above the fold...
However, we are concerned that it may have been the Panda Update. Our site is in the category of "reference" (i.e. previous sports results), which means that there is lots of Thin Content. I have heard that the Panda update took place on January 18. Does anyone know more about the recent Panda update and a way to differentiate between the two algorithm changes?

[deadsea]

I'm hoping it isn't panda at this point too. I don't think it is for me because the rankings dropped for only one of my templates (10,000 pages and 80% of my traffic), while my other templates (300 pages and 20% of my traffic) actually improved rankings.

On Friday, I released a new version of that template that was hit. I had previously reduced the ads above the fold to a minimum, but didn't see any rankings improvement. Now I'm trying to make the "content" as obvious as possible to Googlebot by reducing white space and increasing text
* Reduce the height of the branded header by removing blank space by about 40px.
* Rewrite two sentences of text above the fold that was boilerplate across all 10,000 pages to be unique to each page.
* Reduce margins around most boxes, ads, and other components from 30px to 10px.
* Reduce the size of the content form that I suspect Googlbot isn't actually seeing as content by about 50% by removing white space.
* Introduce a fluid layout that allows more text from below the fold to get pulled up around the ad.

Now I have 90% more unique text above the fold. Hopefully, Googlebot will be see a better content/ad ratio.

[tedster]

The January Panda iteration was not a change to the basic Panda algorithm - only running the existing algo over more recent crawl data. Hope that helps.

[guggi2000]

@tedster: Thanks, I know, but one blog said that Panda is such a CPU heavy algorithm that it needs several iterations. Couldn't it be that Panda just missed my content in 2011 and hit me now? The content has been there for over 1 year (200,000 pages, crawled weekly...).
Another possibility is that content/pages that I added in August 2011 was now marked as thin content.

I also hope/think that it is the Page Layout Algo, but who nows or sure?

[MikeNoLastName]

@Alika:
>Does this algorithm penalizes your whole network of sites?

I visualize it like this (right or wrong - the simplest explanation is usually the most likely and _I_ think it makes a lot of sense):
If your sites are interlinked, and one of them is penalized, G probably REDUCES (discredits) or REMOVES altogether the amount of outgoing PR from that penalized site. Therefore your other sites WOULD of course suffer in PR (not necessarily because of a recognized ownership association but) because they would LOSE that OUTGOING PR from the penalized site. No magic relationship-determining algo, just simple logic and math. Like someone else recently said, we tend to give G way too much credit for magic that isn't there. I believe the same or similar explanation applies to onsite "page penalties affecting your entire site." Once they decide a page is to be Pandalized (for duplication, ads, whatever) likely all the PR of outgoing on-site links from that page turn to 0 or even into negative PR links (if it was me programming it, on-site link PR transfer would go to -2*n per link and offsite link PR to 0*n. A 2 minute programming change), thus affecting the rest of your site proportionately automatically.
Just my vision.

BTW, Rejoice all! Don't act so glum. The 1 yr anniversary of the 2011 Feb Panda release is coming up in a few days. Should we throw a birthday party and brace for an anniversary sequel?

[potentialgeek]

> Two online flash game websites I own with two 336x280 above the fold and the actual game below those two ads seems to be hit by this change.

Where above the fold? Left, Center, Right?

[klark0]

A long time competitor added InfoLinks (he already had 3 adsense blocks, two above the fold).

Within a few days, he has lost about 5 - 7 places for all the keywords. He quickly removed the Infolinks. Now let's see if he gets those places back.

He was 1/2 for many keywords, while I was 3/4.

[steve8383]

Has anyone managed to recover from this algo yet?

As mentioned a few pages ago, my site was penalised and I lost 40% of my traffic. My site wasn't particularly ad heavy, many pages have no ads at all and those that do have rectangle ads half way down the page. The forum on the site, which constitutes 90% of my indexed content, has one leaderboard ad above the fold not unlike the majority of forums.

I removed all ads from the forum for two weeks and it had no effect at all (other than to generate even less revenue). I've added them back in now and pretty much given up on trying to recover.

[graeme_p]

@klark0, I run Vibrant ads, so please let us know if your competitor recover. Has anyone else seen an impact from that type of ad?

[klark0]

@graeme, I'm hoping never since my traffic has almost doubled. :D

It's about 600,000 worth in search volume per month. Will update if he does recover.

[Dlocks]

Dlocks: >> Two online flash game websites I own with two 336x280 above the fold and the actual game below those two ads seems to be hit by this change.

potentialgeek: > Where above the fold? Left, Center, Right?

It was like this:

-------------------------------------------------------
[Menu item 1 Menu item 2 etc. (horizontal menu bar)]

[One line Title of the game]
[Thumbnail of game plus two/three lines description of game]

[ad-1 336x280] --- [ad-2 336x280]

[About 150 px white space because AdSense ads are not allowed direcly above/below/next games]

[The actual game width=728]

[About 150 px white space]

[horizontal banner]

[other games list left] --- [other games list right]

[More text]

[Links to game categories]
-------------------------------------------------------

About 1.5 weeks ago I moved the ads to the section below the [other games list], removed white space and removed the horizontal banner.

So at this moment a Flash game is almost on top of a page. However, a game can take up to 728x600. Makes me wonder if Google algo sees a Flash game as content or as something a user should 'skip'. In other words I'm wondering if Google sees the content section below the Flash as the actual content.

[anteck]

I have quite a few small sites with 336x280 adsense units running near the top - they haven't been affected at all. Meanwhile, one site that was ranking well dropped out with a 300x250 ad unit on the top right of the page. I took away the ad unit a month ago, and nothing has changed. I'd say the algo's broken - clearly isn't working as they 'say' it should be.

[steve8383]

Have to agree with that Anteck, that the algo cant be working properly. As mentioned before my site is not ad heavy at all yet I got penalised.

I'm only seeing the penalty in google.com though, my rankings in .co.uk and .ca are just as they were before Jan 19. Normally they push the algo to the 'lesser' tld's quicker than this don't they?

[graeme_p]

@steve, my site is not ad heavy and I lost the same day as well - on most page only one above the fold ad (admittedly a 336x280) and Vibrant and another ad below the content.

I think something else happened at the same time. What I am seeing is gains by large, multi-topic sites over smaller niche sites. Perhaps you do not have many of those sorts of competitors in the UK and Canada?

[potentialgeek]

This thread is weak and wastes time without (redacted) screenshots of penalized sites.

[guggi2000]

Any recovery for anyone? (Recovery must be around 30-40%, equals one ranking level in the SERP)

[alika]

@potentialgeek -- I'm putting in here a redacted image of one of my sites where traffic nosedived around Jan. 20

[img85.imageshack.us...]

It occasionally has a 468x60 banner ad
It has an Adsense leaderboard
It has an Adsense rectangle
It has Kontera in text links
No popups or popunders

For the life of me, I don't know what to change. Is Google really against leaderboards? Because I see a lot of sites with leaderboards, and remain untouched with the above the fold algorithm.

Do the ads really push down the content? I don't think so.

It's a site that has 98% original content (with 1-2 article submission)

[BillyS]

For the life of me, I don't know what to change. Is Google really against leaderboards? Because I see a lot of sites with leaderboards, and remain untouched with the above the fold algorithm.

If you're asking what to change I would suggest lowering the ads on the page from 90% to something a bit more reasonable. This site fits the EXACT profile of one that I would think is being targeted by Panda.

Just because someone else has leaderboards doesn't mean it's okay for you to load up your site.

[Leosghost]

I agree with BillyS

This site fits the EXACT profile of one that I would think is being targeted by Panda.

Too many ads..above the fold ..( and images which add nothing to "content" <= which is in many cases designed merely to pull in "money phrase" adsense ads ) been saying this here for a year now..but
[phrases.org.uk...]

It isn't about "pushing down" content..it is about "genuinely useful content for the visitor compared to ads ratio"( both above the fold, and in total on the page )..if it looks like an MFA to a visitor..( especially on a smartphone or in "preview" ) it probably will to Google..

[alika]

Load up the site?

This is what I can't understand. One leaderboard is already loading up the site?

Does content mean only words? The image is a featured article. Does that mean that sites with sliders or featured articles not allowed?

[deadsea]

alika: It isn't so much about reducing ads, its about moving the content above the fold. If that "open" image is on more than one page, I don't believe that googlebot would see it as content. The header is almost all white space. The "open" image isn't really content. You have about the same amount of content above the fold as ads. Reduce the white space and move the content up, then you should be fine.

[alika]

@deadsea -- The featured content with the image is ONLY on the homepage. All the other pages only have that header + leaderboard + sidebar, then the articles

So my take aways from what you're saying are:

a. Leaderboards are evil -- even if your site only has a leaderboard, you're toast (never mind the fact that many sites still thrive even with leaderboards + banners + buttons and what have you above the fold)

b. Images are not content. Only text is content

c. Stay away from web designs or wordpress themes that offer those sliding features or featured content as (b) images are not content

I am using a Wordpress theme that uses this featured content box highlighted by an image. I just used the theme out of the box. The image is not designed

to pull in "money phrase" adsense ads

as the ads are based on what the articles on the site are.

Good thing this site does not really depend on Google for traffic.

[Leosghost]

I didnt mean the image by itself ..( is its "alt text" and description matched and or complementary to the content ? ) was designed to pull in "money term" adsense..the text content probably is..and the very "stock" looking image probably adds nothing..

Sorry alika..but you did ask..and it looks like an MFA..the image reminds me of those images used on the parked domain templates that sedo run..G probably disregard it..

But as deadsea says ..you have as much pixel space used by ads ( IMO you have more pixels used by adsense than content text )..If G treat the image as white space..and if the graphic banner is taken as white space..the adsense uses over twice the space of the what remains ie; the "text content"..

Images can obviously be content..but some just look like "stock" vaguely related to the subject, space filler..

The layout says that you want the visitor to think .."nothing to see or read of any real value here ..certainly don't scroll down" ) "just click an adsense link here at the top as soon as you can, and make me some money"..

There are millions of pages like this out there..why would G rank them high ?..those it still does are the "blips"..no doubt it will get around to demoting them too..

There are plenty of posts here at WebmasterWorld by members who have removed an adsense block from a page and seen their earnings rise ..I suggest you think about those posts..

[ken_b]

Seems to me that somehwre since this struck I read/heard of a post/video by MC where he held up a 8.5x11 sheet of paper and one/two of those 3 inch square post it notes to illustrate the acceptable ATF ads/content ratio.

Anyone else recall that, or something like it?

(I'm getting old, might have been my imagination. :)

That said....

Alika, on that image you linked to, other than the image, is the only ATF content the 4 lines immediately below the image and 4 0r 5 lines squeezed between the ads to the right of the image?

If so, some of that ad space may need to be replaced by real content.

.

[ken_b]

This is what I can't understand. One leaderboard is already loading up the site?

Probably not, but ad location might be the issue.

If that leader board were above or next to the logo the page would look a lot different. It would make the whole page look more cohesive.
Logo
Nav Bar
Image
Text Content
Then move that 250x250 down so the top lines up with the bottom of the image and fill the newly vacant space with more text content, even more cohesive.

The idea is to tie the content together more tightly so as to make it the focus of the page.
.

[Leosghost]

Seems to me that somehwre since this struck I read/heard of a post/video by MC where he held up a 8.5x11 sheet of paper and one/two of those 3 inch square post it notes to illustrate the acceptable ATF ads/content ratio.

Anyone else recall that, or something like it?

IIRC it was reported ( somewhere here in WebmasterWorld ) as something he did at pubcon ..09 November 2011..

Danny and Barry have both mentioned Matt being quite specific about "above the fold" and what was "to think about" at the time..

[searchengineland.com...]

Much more detail from Google about "above the fold" mentioned here.. [searchengineland.com...]

[ken_b]

Leosghost; Thanks.

[deadsea]

Based on what others have reported here, images can certainly be counted as content. But it is also clear that Google is discounting boilerplate. So if you are using stock images, or use the same image on multiple pages, I wouldn't count on Googlebot seeing it as content.

[alika]

is its "alt text" and description matched and or complementary to the content

It MATCHES the content exactly. Let me just say that Adsense has been good in matching its ads to the overall topic of the site. The image is not just a ploy to get Adsense to show those keywords

So if you are using stock images, or use the same image on multiple pages

I spend a lot on stock images to find one that MATCHES the content

Understand though that that is just the homepage. All the inside pages have the article start immediately after the leaderboard. I may have an image for each article, but it comes about 4-5 paragraphs within the content

This site fits the EXACT profile of one that I would think is being targeted by Panda.

Good thing Google has a VASTLY different idea of what should be penalized by Panda or not, as this site was never Pandalized.

Goodroi in the earlier pages of this thread defined sites to be affected by the above the fold as:

The Google announcement seems to be very clear that this is for extreme websites. We have all seen sites that are 90% ads and try to trick users into thinking adsense links are content links. Why would we want Google to reward these sites?

That featured image is just on the homepage, so I'll never think that the site is one of the "extreme websites" I've seen worse sites

[Leosghost]

We've all seen worse sites..but if they are not yours , then you are not directly concerned or affected if they rank well or if they don't..

Meanwhile.. as I posted at #4424570

[phrases.org.uk...]

You've had good advice from some of us ..upto you whether you take it in and "adjust" your layout etc..or keep the same layout etc and "nosedived" traffic..

Panda hasn't finished running ( and may well run in waves for a long time to come ) so then fact that you were apparently not hit by it 'til now ..does not mean that Google agrees with you about your above the fold layout..your recent traffic loss would tend to suggest that they disagree strongly with you ..and reading what they say about above the fold layout would appear to explain why ..

[alika]

I have changed the layout of the site:

- used a different wordpress theme; went with a different vendor
- placed the leaderboard by the site logo
- used a featured articles slider where it's half image/half content to address the previous issue where the slider before simply showed the big image (plus, it was more expensive to buy stock images of that size)

For me, it's just interesting to see huge declarations as if people know EXACTLY what sites gets hit by Panda or not

This site fits the EXACT profile of one that I would think is being targeted by Panda.

[BillyS]

That featured image is just on the homepage, so I'll never think that the site is one of the "extreme websites" I've seen worse sites

I don't know why you're so concerned about other sites, you posted a picture of your site. Just because someone else does it doesn't make it right, especially if the practice comes with a potential penalty.

[netmeg]

When I looked at that screenshot, the first thing that jumped out at me was ads. I had to hunt for where the content was, and the image wasn't immediately obvious as not being an ad. You have about two seconds to make an impression on a visitor who hits your page, and that's the impression that screenshot made.

When I go to a site, I want whatever it's about to hit me first. THEN the ads. If it doesn't work that way, I have already categorized that site a certain way in mind - whether or not I stay on it. I suspect Google is doing something similar.

[Thaparian]

45+ days, anybody recovered yet? How much long is it going to take...frustrated

[deadsea]

After a month of minimal ads and no recovery, I put ads back. Its better to be down 30% in traffic than down 30% in traffic and an additional 50% in revenue. I did do a bunch a layout changes to highlight that my site has text content. I reduced white space above the fold, and moved lot of text up above the fold. The interesting thing is that my eCPM is higher now than it was before Jan 18th and my engagement is higher too. It turns out that this algo change prompted me to make changes that are better for my users. My site is better for it, even if I'm still down in traffic.

[FrostyMug]

still no recovery here.

I thought about adding back a leader board ad, but I still think I'll see recovery so I didn't make any changes after the ad clean-up.

BUT... If others report recovery and I'm not recovered, I will definitely strongly think about adding some ads back.

edit: I do think the changes I made are better for my users. I see the site being stickier than before and since a lot of ads that never got a lot of clicks are gone, the CPC is fantastic. But again, earnings are 1/2 of what they were.

[RibaRiva]

I removed the top leaderboard ad on all my pages on February 7. I continued to slip badly throughout most of February (on some days my traffic was down 20% compared to last year) but now the tide has turned since this past weekend. I'm within spitting distance of last year's numbers which is good. Normally I go up 30% per year on this site and that growth rate seems to have stagnated so now I'm looking at other factors related to "thin" content.

[guggi2000]

Asking again after almost 2 months: Has anyone seen a recovery?

[Thaparian]

No signs of recovery, still losing rankings. I was #1 for a long time with site links, now #4. However I still have site links.

[guggi2000]

Asking again: Has anyone recovered from the page layout algorithm?

72 days have passed since then, removed the ads below the fold 70 days ago. No effect yet.

[onebuyone]

guggi2000 it's impossible to answer your question, because there was many updates rolled out in last month and also there was panda refresh.

[deadsea]

I was hoping for a recovery even after putting the ads back they way they were because I was able to re-arrange the layout to put more content above the fold with the ads.

Nothing has recovered.

[Bluejeans]

Since I haven't seen a recovery, I have to assume that I was dinged by one of the other January updates or refreshes. I'm putting the top ads back on my lesser site to see how it does. I've taken quite an income hit following this page-layout theory.

[guggi2000]

@bluejeans
if no one else has recovered so far then the algorithm has not been run yet. As far as I read, it is a manual update and I am curious if and when Google would run it.
I would still be patient if I were you and follow the "news"... I haven't given up yet and still believe that it may recover.

[deadsea]

Based on Google's initial blog post:

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.

Given that folks aren't recovering the possibilities are:

1) It doesn't work like Google intended and they need to re-run something on their end, or they have a bug

2) Many of us that were hit were actually hit by something else on that same day.

[guggi2000]

@deadsea

Please read Danny Sulivan's article in Searchengineland:
[searchengineland.com...]

Read the section: "Fixed Your Ads? Penalty Doesn’t Immediately Lift"

In other words: You do the changes, it takes time to recrawl. Then google runs a manual update in order to remove the "BAD" tag. If they run it before your pages are recrawled, then nothing would happen cause Google remembers the old page layout.

Why is it a manual update? I assume that in order to know how to align a page layout Google needs much more Computer Power than reading just titles and text. It must work similar to Panda...

[edited by: tedster at 4:31 pm (utc) on Apr 1, 2012]
[edit reason] make link active [/edit]

[deadsea]

My ads were reduced for more than a month. Others here have stuck with reduced ads for more than 70 days. The article says "a few weeks". That just doesn't jive with my experience.

[guggi2000]

@deadsea. I wrote the post with the 70 days and I have been sticking to reduced ads all along Just remember that manual Panda updates could happen each 8-10 weeks or more. I agree with you that 10 weeks seems too much, but who knows? I'd be happy if others would give their feedback too.

[vthomas85]

The debate about whether or not you can see quick improvements from fixing the issues is interesting. I always heard for some of the panda updates that your site couldn't rebound entirely until the next wave of updates. That seems a little silly if you ask me, and I have no data to back up that sentiment. Just food for thought.

[FrostyMug]

I've been posting here too. I too saw a big decline on January 19. I moved all the offending top-heavy ads about five days later. I also modified content heavily to move it to the top of the page. My site has been up for a very long time, never affected by panda.

I got too greedy with AdSense suggestions for three ads on each page.

Since January 19 I have not seen any changes in ranking. They're still at 50% of original traffic. I think the algorithm has not been rerun. Otherwise we all would see changes to the sites.

I had three ads on each page. Long banner on top, one square ad, and a footer. I Wiped all but the middle ad and moved it to below the fold.

[tedster]

I always heard for some of the panda updates that your site couldn't rebound entirely until the next wave of updates. That seems a little silly if you ask me

It's because Panda is so computationally intensive that it's a separate routine, run once in a while and then the results are integrated. Last month Google made some changes to integrate part of the Panda routine closer to real time, and I'm sure that's the eventual aim for ATF and anything else they think up. Hey - all rankings used to be stuck for a full month, remember?