Google Page Layout Penalty

Google has announced a new change in its search algorithm. This new feature of the search engine giant will be able to look at your site's page layout and determine (by it's new standards) if the ads above the fold are excessive. If Google decides that they are, your site could be penalized and dropped down in the search results pages. This is potentially bad news for those relying on ad campaigns to generate conversions, alongside their SEO (search engine optimisation) endeavours.

This came as little suprise to us (and to all other SEO companies that follow the exploits of the Search Quality Team at Google)as Matt Cutts had already made this announcement earlier this week:

"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. So, sites that don't have much content "above-the-fold" can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn't have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward."

What does this mean for SEO?

To help website owners to understand whether their site could be penalised by the new addition to their algorithm, Google has released a special tool as part of GoogleLabs (the same tool we use at SEO Junkies to determine the best keywords for search engine optimisation.) This will can be used to determine where the problem areas could be if your site is particularly ad-heavy.

The development in Google's guidelines has already caused controversy and an out-pouring of outrage on the web-forums, mostly caused by the apparent hypocrisy of Google's actions. This change completely refutes the search engine's own advice to its AdSense customers - namely to place the majority of ads close to the top of the page, so that potential buyers will click on them sooner. However, as all those who practice search engine optimisation will know, the most important information should be placed at the top of each page of content, so it is possible to see what Google is driving at. By placing ads at the top of each page, it could be misconstrued that your site is all about making a quick sale, instead of offering a quality service. As quality service is all about people, and as good feedback from those people (as far as Google is concerned) is expressed by backlinks, perhaps it's unsuprising that they should be placing more emphasis on content quality at this stage.

That being said, the 'double-standards' of this announcement is unavoidable, and will certainly have repercussions for those who rely on ad campaigns rather than SEO.