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, 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.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is a Founding Editor of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also serves as Chief Content Officer for Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He has a personal blog called Daggle (and keeps his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.