Google May Penalize Ad Heavy Pages

Ever encountered an ad-heavy page, where you struggle to find the actual content on that page? Google’s looking at penalizing those in its search results. The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the news when speaking at the Pubcon conference today. Cutts said Google is testing algorithms that determine “what are the things that really matter, […]

Chat with SearchBot

Matt 2Ever encountered an ad-heavy page, where you struggle to find the actual content on that page? Google’s looking at penalizing those in its search results.

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

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?”

Many already assume that Google’s Panda algorithm is already penalizing ad heavy pages. This suggest that this either is not part of the Panda algorithm or that it might be made a separate and more specific algorithm in the works.

Postscript: This is now an actual penalty. See our follow-up post: Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.