Yesterday, Google posted on its Inside Search blog that they will be enforcing a new algorithm called the “page layout algorithm”. It is no secret that many content websites makes their money off of marketing ads on their pages. It’s simple, advertisers pay to have their ads on your website on a CPM model and the more page views or impressions you have the more you (the publisher) get paid. Now keep in mind that most advertisers only want premium placement, “above- the-fold” which guarantees a user to see their ad. So in theory, the more ads you place on a specific page and on your website, the more impressions you generate for each ad, the more advertisers you can stuff on a page, and therefore make more dollars.
This has a negative effect on users for websites that cram their pages with ads because users then have a hard time navigating the pages and finding the content they originally were looking for. Google, besides ruling the world, is very adamant about users enjoying their experiences on the web. So they decided to nip this issue in the bud with the new algorithm.
What Google’s new algorithm says is that websites that don’t have enough content “above-the-fold” will be affected by this change. According to an article by Matt Cutts on searchengineland.com, if this is your site, impacts less than 1% of searches you may start dropping in the ranks.
But, have no fear! There are preventative measures you can take as well as corrective measures if your website does end up being affected by this, which you can read about in this article about the new algorithm.
So what’s the take away here? Google knows EVERYTHING. Google is all about improving and supporting good user experiences. If you use smoke and mirrors to get users to your website, then you are going to get the Google slap at some point in time. Pure Google Karma.
Here is a little video for more info on how to better balance your ads:
Chad Recchia
Interactive Marketing & Web Manager
Mood: Fridayzzle
