Google has always been unpredictable in terms of updates and so was the announcement on the update of the new algorithm. The Search Giant Google updated the new algorithm and surprised all last week. In 2011, the updated Google’s Panda Update was the most popular algorithm which was purely related to web content. The aim of it was to push back the websites in the search results with immediate effect which carries any duplicated content or spin in any of its web articles.
Right at the start of the New Year 2012, Search Giant Google has introduced another fresh algorithm named “Page Layout Algorithm” a.k.a “Above The Fold Algorithm” developed by the Head of Google’s Webspam team – Matt Cutts, as per the user’s request. Before launching a new algorithm, Google Engineers always work hard on various angles so as to deliver the search results to the users in a friendly manner. On this basis, this algorithm purely works on the principle of the amount of advertisements present in the website.
Image Courtesy: Search Engine Land
These days, making some revenue through internet has been a hobby between bloggers and webmasters. They create a blog and put some advertisements in their web pages so as to make money out of it. As People have been playing with advertisements just for the sake of money, those kind of website seems to carry more number of ads than the information in it. To stop these kinds of sites, this algorithm has been launched so as to keep an eye on these kinds of websites and penalize it.
As known by most, content is prominent in a website and every webmaster should make sure that the website which has been designed by their team is user-friendly rather than being seo-friendly. They must also give high priority to user’s view compared to the SE view. An informative portal would only get complete if it contains relevant text information and visual information such as pictures, videos, etc.
Reason behind generating this type of algorithm:
As the Search Giant Google got various complaints from users regarding the bunch of advertisements present in the websites, they decided to take the initiative and block such websites from the search results and to provide relevant stuffs as well.
Google stated in a statement that,
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.
How does this Page Layout Algorithm affects the website?
Let’s see how this new algorithm affects the websites which contains enormous amount of ads.
- Gets the website penalized by Google
- Web crawling is stopped for the websites containing more ad panels
- Websites getting away from the search results much quicker compared to nominal websites ranking higher in the search results
So, all the website designers will need to keep a note about this new algorithm so that the site developed by them does rank high in search engines as they have sticked to the rules updated by Google.
Onwards and upwards we go!
