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.

Facebook launched web email system. [messages that matter]…:)

Hey,
A hot news from Facebook. They launched (set to launch globally) web email system.
The launch of an @facebook.com email is not itself a great surprise – the existence of a secret project officially known as Project Titan and unofficially as “Gmail killer” has been circulating since February.
But tech industry analysts believe that a Facebook email system, coupled to its popular photo and events programs, could become a comprehensive competitor to Gmail.
If, as anticipated, Mark Zuckerberg’s firm launches a Facebook search engine that prioritises results around the known preferences of a user’s circle of friends, then the commercial potential of social networking would be greatly extended.
Google has more than two-thirds of the search market, and there is little doubt it is taking seriously the threat of Facebook, which has more than 500 million members but lacks business-orientated, revenue-generating services.
Last week, Google announced plans to raise salaries by 10% next year for all employees, interpreted as an effort to staunch the loss of top staff to rivals.
“They don’t have an absolute lock on the top talent anymore,” analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Partners told Reuters. “Facebook right now is accumulating top talent and it’s harder for Google to retain people.”
As social networking continues to challenge the power of search on the web, the moment may come when Facebook decisively threatens Google’s control of $24bn in annual search advertising revenue.
Google itself denies it is building a social networking platform to compete with Facebook. Instead, chief executive Eric Schmidt says it plans to add “layers” of social networking to its products.
Last night, Facebook continued to deny the reports that its email application will be launched at Monday’s media event where Zuckerberg is scheduled to speak.
“We don’t comment on speculation about future products,” a spokesman said.

Facebook launched web email system.
The launch of an @facebook.com email is not itself a great surprise – the existence of a secret project officially known as Project Titan and unofficially as “Gmail killer” has been circulating since February.
But tech industry analysts believe that a Facebook email system, coupled to its popular photo and events programs, could become a comprehensive competitor to Gmail.
If, as anticipated, Mark Zuckerberg’s firm launches a Facebook search engine that prioritises results around the known preferences of a user’s circle of friends, then the commercial potential of social networking would be greatly extended.
Google has more than two-thirds of the search market, and there is little doubt it is taking seriously the threat of Facebook, which has more than 500 million members but lacks business-orientated, revenue-generating services.
Last week, Google announced plans to raise salaries by 10% next year for all employees, interpreted as an effort to staunch the loss of top staff to rivals.
“They don’t have an absolute lock on the top talent anymore,” analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Partners told Reuters. “Facebook right now is accumulating top talent and it’s harder for Google to retain people.”
As social networking continues to challenge the power of search on the web, the moment may come when Facebook decisively threatens Google’s control of $24bn in annual search advertising revenue.
Google itself denies it is building a social networking platform to compete with Facebook. Instead, chief executive Eric Schmidt says it plans to add “layers” of social networking to its products.
Last night, Facebook continued to deny the reports that its email application will be launched at Monday’s media event where Zuckerberg is scheduled to speak.
“We don’t comment on speculation about future products,” a spokesman said.

@ Facebook Blog : http://goo.gl/jIHpN

(Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/nov/13/facebook-email-launch-google-gmail)

Thanks,

Jenson

Instant Job Offer from YouTube for YouTube Instant…..:)

YouTube Instant (Not an official YouTube associated URL) is a real time video search engine similar to Google instant functionality built by 19 year old  Stanford University student and Facebook software engineer intern, Feross Aboukhadijeh.  The functionality created by Feross allows its users to search the YouTube video database as they type. It follows on the heels of Google Instant, and has been described as a “novelty toy”, a “catchy little title”, a “prototypal digit to tie the “instant” bandwagon” as well as a “completely excellent way to waste 15 minutes”.
After completion of his development, he tweeted in his account as “Heard of Google Instant? Well, I built YouTube Instant. http://fb.me/FEW3VAa3
Later, Feross was offered a job from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley through twitter shortly after he created that functionality. At the point of YouTube Instant’s creation, He  was a summer intern at Facebook, and has said that he is working on a Secret Facebook project.
Feross’ YouTube Instant URL : http://ytinstant.com

I Just want to tell you all that I also had such type of thoughts about Google Instant functionality in YouTube, Wikipedia & other Major type of Websites…But the problem was that I didn’t go for the development further…So Please remember Imagination & Implementation are entirely  different! Hats off to Feross anyway…..:)

Cheers,

Jenson