Google Updates Algorithm To Punish Websites With Excessive Ads 321
hypnosec writes "Google has decided to take punitive actions against those websites that flood the top of their web pages with ads due to which the visitors have to scroll down to finally view the relevant contents on the page. According to Google, this type of layouts annoys the users and thus the web search company will be penalizing those websites through search results. The company disclosed this on its blog. According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such websites might not get high ranking on Google web search."
measurement (Score:5, Interesting)
So, is there a place where we can measure how well our websites conform to google's ideas of user-friendliness?
Or do we have to find out the hard way?
Google, please don't... (Score:4, Interesting)
All things considered, if a site scores high in search results because it has the most relevant results, I'm okay with scrolling down past the ads that I ignore. If I'm searching for something in a content search engine, it's because I want relevant content; the fluff surrounding that content doesn't really matter to me.
It's all very nice that Google in their infinite wisdom wants to protect me from those harmful ads that I can ignore, but to make the search results less useful is not what I consider an overall positive outcome.
(Mind you, I use Yahoo, so Google needn't listen to me too much.)
There are no acceptable ads. (Score:5, Interesting)
Any ad which uses Javascript has a performance hit, which lets face it is ALL ads. And it's noticeable since all ad serving "platforms" are old-skool, chain-loading, document.writing, bloated piles of shit.
Check the waterfall diagram for a simple adsense text unit. Yep, that's what I'm talking about.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are human testers involved. I did this for a while. Basically you get thrown 10 pages that are mostly all alike and you have to pick the best one. So the page with fewer ads and the same content will be marked as better by the testers. This will then push that page higher in the algorithm. Other test include visiting 10 sites for a search query and marking which ones display the data, which ones are virus filled, which ones have too many ads etc. There is a review process as well. I also vaguely remember doing a test where a previous tester said these things about a page, are they correct? It's subjective, but you definitely can tell a good page from a bad page quickly.
Re:except google (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's little text-only ads are the only ones I (and many others) find acceptable. They tend to be relevant, are easily ignored, and don't detract from the aesthetics of the page. For those reasons, I generally don't block Google's ads and have once or twice clicked on them because they really were relevant.
The ones I really hate are the ones that come up over the content and you have to search for a way to close it... especially the ads that do this behavior when you accidentally move the mouse over the ad.
Editing (Score:5, Interesting)
From the "Good god, would it kill you to edit submissions for basic grammar" department.
According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such websites might not get high ranking on Google web search
Is barely a coherent sentence.
Yay, but what about Wikipedia Content Scrapers? (Score:5, Interesting)
My pet peeve with google searches is when I get page after page of pages which have just stolen the text from Wikipedia and placed it on their site with ads.
Speaking of ducks... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've developed a habit of using duckduckgo for most routine searches.
I find the thumbnails of neckbeards in Google to be extremely irritating, while duckduckgo shows favicons which can occasionally be useful visual clues.
Re:except google (Score:5, Interesting)
You are likely correct.
Based on what? They did punish their own browser due to the sponsored results, so they obviously care about been seen as impartial (regardless of what actually motivates that desire).
Re:except google (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually some websites actually manage to make Google ads very unpleasant by putting so many of them on the top of the page, in the middle of the content etc.
This probably leads to people clicking on them by mistake which from the advertiser's perspective is bad. The advertisers are likely to complain to Google and any ad agency or even to ask Google for refunds for such clicks.
So a page full of ads is not just bad for the user, it's bad for targeted advertising which is what Google does.
Re:I don't believe (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet they let experts-exchange get away with their faking out google, despite the fact that it's well-known that they do it AND google has said that's explicitly a no-no...
Re:Some people don't need this (Score:2, Interesting)
LOL "deprecate Flash" you do understand Flash is ONLY viable application/game platform on WEB currently? ...
(Silver-light never really took off unfortunately) and HTML 5 is a JOKE every browser has different implementation, and if you decide to make site that will work/is compatible with only 1 browser good luck if you want to reach over 95% users since no browser currently has 95% of market ( Flash has 97%-98% )
if you want to write plain old website HTML is OK but if you want something more modern/dynamic/something that replaces desktop POS/reporting systems/games good luck
Re:What annoys me... the "+" modifier (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't like Google, walk your feet to Blekko (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a "user experience" with someone second-guessing you and tossing extra keywords into every search, pfft, google it.
I occasionally try new search engines ( Google remained my favorite ) yet recently switched, due to proof that one is better... for me. I'm a scientist. I was convinced by the results of the game, Three Engine Monte, over at http://blekko.com/ [blekko.com]
" search term /monte "
I was impressed by how often I picked the Blekko search results link. Most often, the more relevant listing was unearthed by Blekko. I found better information with Blekko. I was mightily impressed, and switched. Unless you want local listings every search on a movie title, (which still seems intrusive to me), in which case stick with the big brother who gives you priority paid listings.
Grasshopper, if you are not trying new search engines, regularly, you are <strike>eating search results pablum</strike> missing out on some awesome information.