Published on February 01, 2012 Google introduces “Page Layout” penalty for over-advertisers
Using advertising in a website is a good way to earn a bit of extra money, but where you place the advertising in your website can now influence your search engine rankings, following a new update by Google.
The new update means that websites that have excessive advertising in the top part of the screen that requires no scrolling (this is called “above the fold” in advertising speak), will lose favour in the eyes of Google as the search engines strive to give more weight to sites that have “less clutter” at the top of the screen.
This does not mean that you can’t have any advertising in your website – Google’s penalty is for sites that have considerable advertising and little quality content. Or, advertising in places on the screen where visitors expect to find content. Google’s reasoning behind these changes is that “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. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.”
If you are using advertising in your side banners of your shop for example, we recommend that you do the following:
- If you have two columns put the banners in the right hand column, and right at the bottom of the list of advertising positions.
- If you are using centre banner advertising and the advertising is for another website, put the banners at the bottom of the page and not the top.
- Look at your site at http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/. Ensure your advertising appears in areas of this visualisation that are 40% or less (meaning that only 40% of site visitors have their browsers open wide enough to see this advertising without scrolling. Remember it doesn’t mean you can’t have advertising on your site, it just means that you can’t replace good quality content with advertising.
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