
Page layout algorithm improvement - avsaro
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
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nmcfarl
I’m wondering how much this will alter <http://experts-exchange.com> 's rank.
Although the questions are above the fold the vast majority of the content is
well under the fold (for the purpose of hiding it, and getting you to pay.)

It seems like this change is directly aimed at eliminating that tactic...

~~~
nostromo
They've been in trouble for a few years:
[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=www.experts-
exchange.com...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=www.experts-
exchange.com%2C+stackoverflow.com)

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Silhouette
The first question that came to my mind was: How do they know what is an ad
and what is just a heavily graphical site that is exactly what the user was
looking for?

If they're virtually rendering the page and looking at how much page area is
covered by content from known ad networks (including Google Ads, I trust) then
that's one thing. If they're looking for lots of nice, Google-friendly text
and just discarding images, Flash, etc, then that's another thing entirely.

~~~
shabble
I wonder how much the in-house expertise of developing Chrome is contributing
to the GoogleBot analysis stuff. Having people who aren't afraid to go knee
deep in WebKit and produce some nice fast library for partially evaluating
layouts, etc, is probably quite a nice thing.

As one of the sibling comments here mentions, ad detection is a pretty well-
solved problem by now, through size, position and origin matches. The
interesting part here I think is how they're actually doing the 'virtual
rendering' (and presumably, reflowing it for each of their mentioned typical
browser resolutions) to check what's actually 'above the fold'.

~~~
joshu
i suspect that the cpu time to even partially render a page via webkit is
really expensive at scale.

that said, i recall there was a headless chrome that someone built - anyone
remember where that is?

~~~
joshu
answered my own question: <http://www.phantomjs.org/>

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Pound6F
I think google is going about this the wrong way. They are claiming its a bad
user experience for the search term to be down on the page or not have any
content at the top but (1) that is far too generic a statement to make and (2)
it is not Google's responsibility to make sure pages align to a certain design
standard. They are essentially adding design requirements into their search
algorithm. This restricts the design of any webpage that wants to optimize its
Google ranking.

~~~
mey
Ultimately Google is making a stand for user of it's search (Who they make
money off of) by providing what the user wants. Which is easier and quicker
access to information.

If your primary business model is free content, ad supported, and rely on
google as your search engine, you don't have much of a choice.

Right or wrong, your business model is Google dependent, and you are held
hostage. If you don't like that, it's time to find another business model.

(Google being a monopoly is another issue, but no search engine is required to
carry your content for discovery (yet, who knows what congress will throw at
the wall next year))

~~~
TomGullen
Agree completely! A lot of people who run sites seem to think Google should be
serving them and they are victims of unfair algorithms. Google is actually
serving the people who search.

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WillyF
Oddly enough, there are a lot of search results pages now that are more ads
than content above the fold. Danny Sullivan does a nice job of illustrating
the point here: [http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-
now-...](http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-
penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613)

~~~
avsaro
Danny Sullivan really makes a nice job however this usually is not the case,
imo. Generally, Google's result page does not contain so much ad. In most
cases which result page contain too much ad, ads might be even more relevant
than natural results.

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cullenking
This is right in line with last years announcement that Google will penalize
slow sites. In my experience, there is significant overlap between slow load
times and sites heavy on the banner ads...

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mutagen
What percentage of users is Google considering for 'above the fold' and are
they just penalizing for ad content or do logos, images and header junk get
penalized as well?

For example, the WordPress TwentyEleven theme as seen in
<http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/> shows the first article header at the 50%
threshold, buried below the generous header and image banner. Would a site
based on this theme or a similar design face a penalty?

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alexchamberlain
I wonder how this will interact with responsive web design?

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JangoSteve
This is exactly why I've been using the Google Quick Scroll extension in
Chrome.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjnmnbdibhgpbllgc)

Will this very negatively impact sites such as Twitter's Hogan JS?
<http://twitter.github.com/hogan.js/>

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TomGullen
I like this change, and the way Google is headed.

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nader
This will surely impact a lot of those typical adsense-optimized niche
websites. In case you're interested I wrote a longer piece here:
[http://www.brandinfection.com/2012/01/20/google-improves-
ran...](http://www.brandinfection.com/2012/01/20/google-improves-ranking-
algorithm-now-looks-at-ad-placement/)

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carlsednaoui
As posted in one of the blog post's comments. I suggest you do this:

\- Open a new tab, google search "credit cards" and...

...all of your results, but one, are ads (I'm using a 11' MacBook air). My
suggestion would be to do a tighter integration of Google's website user
experience research into their search engine user experience design.

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Too
I hope this won't favor short sites where all the content fits above the fold
compared to long, solid articles or q&a-site questions with several replies.
Stackoverflow for example often requires scrolling to reach an answer because
the question itself is so long.

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alexchamberlain
That shouldn't happen if the algorithm correctly understands ads verses
content.

