Google’s Page Layout Algorithm : Web Pages with too many ads will be Penalized!

Google Page Layout Algorithm & Penalty

If you’re running a website/blog with too many ads above the fold, It’ll be Penalized by the Google’s Page Layout Algorithm.

Google posted the information to its Google Webmaster Central blog (This is an old info but I realized it recently because I suspect my pages in Google search results dropped due to this update!)

“Webmaster Level: All

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.

As we’ve mentioned previously, 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.

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects 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. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly. You can use our Browser Size tool, among many others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.

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.

Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus on specific algorithm tweaks. This change is just one of the over 500 improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. As always, please post your feedback and questions in our Webmaster Help forum.”

The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the news when speaking at the PubCon conference.

Cutts said Google is testing algorithms that determine ”what are the things that really matter, how much content is above the fold.”

Adding further, Cutts warned:

“If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” asking publishers to consider, “Do they see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?” [http://searchengineland.com/google-may-penalize-ad-heavy-pages-100601]

So I suggest all website owners/Bloggers to avoid placing too many ads Above The Fold (ATF)

Google has blacklisted php.net website!

PHP Developer’s Home php.net has been blacklisted by Google. I think that’s probably happened ~ in between 23rd October 2013 11:15 PM IST and 24th October 2013 9:35 AM IST. Tha actual problem is that Google’s Safe Browsing technology is blocking access to PHP.net as a precaution, after apparently detecting that some of its pages were booby-trapped with links to malicious software. php.net is widley used by coders all around the globe. Google didn’t specify the types of Trojans associated with the apparent attack but it did state the domains they came from. Users visiting the PHP.net site using Google Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and or Apple Safari (Mozilla and Apple both license Safe Browsing from Google) were confronted by a warning firmly instructing them not to proceed any further.

PHP founder Rasmus Lerdorf on Twitter (@rasmus) tweeted :

“It appears Google has found a false positive and marked all of  http://php.net  as suspicious. pic.twitter.com/YDlHcUnCK6 “

But One Googler (http://goo.gl/8jyJRx) told in this post (http://goo.gl/Iw2Fx4) :

“What our systems found was definitely a compromised JS file, and others on this thread have posted something similar to what we saw. This is not a false positive.

We have detailed help for webmasters in this kind of situation:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/hacked/

One thing that I strongly suggest to any webmaster in this situation is to look for any server vulnerability that allowed this file to get compromised in the first place. We sometimes see webmasters simply fix the affected files without digging into security hole that allowed the hack, which leaves the server vulnerable for repeat attacks.”

Zend Co-Founder Zeev Suraski (@zeevs) replied to my tweet related to this issue:

zeev_tweet_jensons

Below are the screenshots links which shows malware warning :

Firefox Warning

Chrome Warning

Google Search for ‘php.net’

Whatever the problem my favorite website is blacklisted by Google!..:( Google will remove this warning soon (Hopefully) !

Cheers,

JENSon.

Google Instant : New Way of Searching!

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as we type. Google says : “People type slowly, but read quickly. This means that you can scan a results page while you type. The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.”

Google Claims,

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

The product, named “Instant” and currently available only to users who are logged in to Google, will save typical searchers between two and five seconds per query. It should take the average query time down from approximately 24 seconds to around 20 seconds. The company also estimates that “dynamically predicting what people search for reduces the time it takes to enter a typical query by 50 per cent”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2tYIi82Znk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yB6bbDKBI4

The service will also display a series of its best guesses as users type, and searchers can then scroll down to the most appropriate.

The company estimates that each Google search will now generate between five and seven times as many requests to its servers, but because each search generates only a very small amount of data to transmit back to each computer, the new service is not likely to strain either broadband networks or Google’s own servers. Users on particularly slow connections will automatically be pushed to the original Google search, but will have the option to select “Instant”.

Cheers,

Jenson