Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, announced at the PubCon conference that ad heavy websites might be penalized in the near future. What exactly are ad heavy websites and is your own website at risk?
What did Matt Cutts say at the conference?
Matt Cutts said that Google was testing algorithms that determine how much content is available above the fold on a web page. He warned that websites that have ads that obscure the content could get in trouble.
You should ask yourself if your website visitors see the content of your website or if there’s something distracting or annoying on the page.
Google is serious about eliminating these pages from the search results
Google’s Panda algorithm update already focused on low quality pages that were created around ads. Matt Cutts’ announcement suggests that Google is working on more algorithms that remove these pages from the search results.
What is an ad heavy web page?
An ad heavy web page is a page on which it is difficult to find the actual content. A typical ad heavy page can look like this:
What does this mean to your website?
If it’s hard to find the actual content on your web pages, you should redesign your website. Make it easier to find the content of your web pages and do not plaster your pages with third party ads.
Google is serious about eliminating spam and low quality pages from the search results. If you want to get lasting high rankings, only use ethical search engine optimization methods. Optimize your web pages with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer to make sure that Google gets what they want on your web pages and try to improve the backlinks of your website.
Article by Axandra SEO software
1 thought on “Google to penalise ad-heavy websites – is your website at risk?”
Google may be "cutting off its nose to spite its face" with this move as mnay people use Google Adsense to raise enough money to keep their sites going and Google encourage this. Google makes money from Adsense, so discourageing add placement where people can see it and it is most effective (above the fold) might cause Google to loose money. However, this may also be a ploy to oust other advert suppliers like Clickbank and affiliate networks etc… from the Advert market. Googles algorithm might simply allow Google adds above the fold but delist from search results pages with other advert networks or private adverts. I am sure there will be law suits if this happens.
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