Google Announces Above-the-Fold Algorithm Change - Affects SEO | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Yeah, one of the good things of having no adverts.

Above the fold is an old newspaper term that talks about what you see on the front page of the newspaper before the natural fold at the bottom of most papers. When you flip over the newspaper to see the stories and the ads at the bottom of the page. That is said to be below the fold.

For websites, above the fold is everything that you see before you start scrolling down. It is typically your banner, headers, and probably the first blog post. Ad space above the fold is a premium because statistics show that less and less readers continue to scroll down your website. So, an ad buried near the bottom of the page will receive far fewer eyeballs than something positioned really high up on the page. 

I really hope that their algorithm will be able to tell the difference between ads and other "non-content" material. If not, then site will get punished for what comes down to a simple design choice. Some sites have widgets, banners, subscribe buttons and other items that are not ads, but are not content either. I hope those things are ignored by this new algorithm.

This is concerning as we do run one non Google ad, predominantly, on our home page.  Only Canadians see it but still, makes me concerned.

One or two ads above the fold should be ok, right? I mean many full time bloggers earn their max income from this premium area.

MaximizingMoney, thanks so much for pointing this out. Actually what you brought to my attention is that I can subscribe to the Google feed to keep up on these types of updates ;)

Hank, I completely agree with you. As you and others know, ads in the fold do very well. If I remove my top ads I would lose a lot of revenue. I would actually take the revenue over rankings to be honest. Most bloggers end up using the top right sidebar for ads – since advertisers like to utilize that space.Yah it woudl be really hard to let go of the design as it is, but in terms of the site, from and SEO perspective I have very little content in my fold.

I think Google is really looking for scam sites that load up on ads instead of acutally providing any content, so they are using the fold as one measure (not the only measure). Folks don't rush into any big changes, but do keep it in mind. If Google says they are going to make changes to search ranking – they will do it. The Panda update is a well known example!

What Google is going to do is see how much html and code you have in the fold compared to actual content – ads use a lot of code. So the more code and html in your fold area, the lower you will get ranked. But that's tough, because most sites need a header, navigation and one or two ads. Also look at your site physically in terms acutal inches (pixels or whatever you want to use) – how many square inches of ads do you have versus actual screen width? Google can also measure that. What the ratio will be is a mystery!

For me I htink I can still keep the design but look at how to move my content higher, maybe minimize the depth of my header and menus etc. At the end of the day its compromise, between SEO and looks :) If you give up looks you don't get the visitors either.

Ironic isn't it, that the Google search page and most Google pages are nothing but ads ;)

Cheers

Could this be the reason that I went to 900 Views on Thursday to less than 400 on Friday then 250 on Saturday and then back up to a normal Sunday today?  Are they testing my site out?