Never mind that the latest page layout algorithm update announced by Google has already been labeled as hypocritical by Danny Sullivan and others: what Google wants is here to stay, and the healthiest thing to do is to comply. It’s Google’s quest to rank sites that offer a good user experience ahead those that clutter their pages with ads – however, it is a rather unfortunate update for sites that depend on ads for monetization. Content cannot be free in the absence of income streams.
Google AdSense recommends publishers to post three ad units per content-rich page. However, many publishers stay away from AdSense, which, in their opinions, is not a professional way to go. The topic is subject to controversy, especially since the dawn of MFA (Made for AdSense) sites that scraped content from publishers, without giving due credit. And despite Google’s best efforts, these sites are still out there. But if publishers don’t use AdSense (where Google recommends to have ads placed above-the-fold); and they use other ad networks and individual sponsors, the revenue streams will be seriously affected by this update, that will determine many publishers to place ads under the fold to protect their sites against page layout algorithm penalties.
The penalties are not that extreme, implying just a “reordering” of Google’s search results that will only affect 1% of searches globally, meaning that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. Also, it is important to understand that penalties are not aimed at sites that place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree (although “normal degree” has not been defined). According to Google, the penalties are primarily aimed at sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. Sure, in this category you cannot include Google’s own search engine that clutters search results with sponsored ads above-the-fold. In fact, you cannot include any Google sites and products.
Publishers that are not affiliated with Google and fall under the under the “excessive degree” category are advised to use Google’s Browser Size tool to see how their sites look under different screen resolutions. Below an example of MFA site, loaded with ads above-the-fold.
Browser Size has nothing to do with your ads, but is a visualization of browser window sizes
If your site looks like the example above, it may be targeted by the Page Layout Algorithm update, and penalized. If it has already been penalized, but you still decide to update your pages, it may take up to weeks for Google to “lift” the penalty:
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. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.
Despite the controversy inherent to such algorithm updates, this could be a move in the right direction – especially if it gets rid of MFA and web scrapers. But it leaves room for erroneous penalties, especially concerning large sites that depend heavily on ads from other networks (that are not affiliated with Google). And while Google insists in advising site owners to focus on delivering the best possible user experience, let’s not forget that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that user experience is also related to how savvy web users are in navigating different types of sites.
Last but not least, the page layout algorithm update is one of the 500 so-called “improvements” Google threatens to roll out this year.
About Mihaela Lica Butler
Great Analysis!!