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Google Updates Algorithm To Punish Websites With Excessive Ads
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."
Or face the consequences.
Because they use AdBlock (and before any troll comments on the new mode; go to the menu and uncheck the allow acceptable ads section)!
Presumably not punishing google ads (ducks)
with their top posted ad...
that Google does this for altruistic reasons. Where is the snake under the grass ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Will they punish themselves?
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?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
It must be a pretty impressive algorithm if it's going to sort out good from bad sites... and it'd be interesting to see if it counts its own ads on pages if they're bundled in a bunch of others. I think they need to work on data mining sites which duplicate searches and put them on their sites to pull in clicks when no significant subject matter is really contained within the site itself. That would be better than ad sites.. and this pretty much wreaks of sneakiness.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
and that good for you mayor villain from Demolition Man. They try to say it's good for you when all they are doing is trying to lock out the competition
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.)
In the war for eyeballs, a search engine needs to produce the "best" results for your query, and provide meaningful, useful pages at the top of the list. If your searches on a given provider just bring up link farms or pages which are so strewn with ads that its hard to find the content, you're going to try another search engine. Google makes its money by getting people to search using their engine, and by delivering relevant ads.
I'm a bit surprised they haven't been more aggressive at weeding out crap pages. Or it could just be that they're losing market share, and they looked into why people were going elsewhere.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Good. The thumbnail sized content will be at the top. Bad. The page will reset to the bottom after the onload image refresh script runs.
onload='fuxWithGoogle(evt)'
function fuxWithGoogle(evt) { window.scrollBy(0,100); }
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
What about sites where people have to wade through pages of ads and links to get the actual content they were after, including news that is clipped into small pieces, and spread over a lot of pages, all with lots of ads?
Hopefully this will send Expert Sex Change into oblivion.
So tired of their results.
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.
Don't we all use an ad blocker?
Not relevant.
For the longest time, you've been able to block domains in google.
http://www.google.com/reviews/t (If logged in)
Amusingly enough, when I loaded /. today there was a banner ad across the top of the homepage (at work, so can't install ABP here).
The correct reason to punish those sites is that there is a very high correlation between excessive ads and crap content (or good content that has been copied illegaly from other sites that will now get a better rating.)
there are a lot of sites meant to display as much ads as they can, with some copied content from somewhere else and every trick in the SEO books to attrack traffic. And how you decide that a site is doing that, like specifically tricking the search engine to think it is normal? Their next move should be to lower the amount of ads, and then the users, if well will keep falling there, at least won't load as much ads as usual.
About "normal" sites, with original content, and lots of ads to make them profitable, probably other factors could keep ranking them higher, and if the line they put between normal use of ads and abusive is high enough could end not hurting a lot and forcing the sites that abuse to give a better end user experience.
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.
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.
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.
All of these awful sites are loaded with Google adverts. Google should kick them all down just the same.
You know the sort of sites they're after, they have one or two sentences, sandwiched between big adverts, most of the initial screen pixels are advertising. I'll be happy to see them gone.
So who died and made Google legislator, judge and executor on crimes against appropriate webpage content?
It look like prefectly good english to me. I should know, I speek english real good!
You mean like Gopher?
paintball
"According to Google, this type of layouts annoys the users and thus the web search company will be penalizing those websites through search results."
Oh, of course! That totally makes sense, because, you see, Google really doesn't want anyone on the internet to be annoyed! It's part of their business plan!
Except those ads will have the same Achilles heel of all ads; they're served from a relatively small number of large companies, and so can be taken out with noscript.
If a site served an ad from their own domain, it would waltz straight though my defences, but I can sleep soundly knowing that will never happen.
Really, that is all I wish Google would quit asking for. Seriously, why do they need it? I say no over and over again and still they insist they need it to protect me from me! Why? They know what IP I connect from, and they know who I email. Why they fuck do they keep asking for a phone number?
Google, after you fix that glitch in you system, please quit trying to force me into using an interface I hate. All I want is to be able to read my email, and all that requires is the exchange of text. I sign on, you deliver data. What could be more simple?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
What annoys me is when I search for a particular word or phrase, and Google takes me to a page which lacks that word.
I used to be able to type "+blankie" and google would show only those pages that had the word blankie in them. No longer. It just says that + is no longer supported, and takes me to a load of pages without that word.
Also it would be nice if Google did not index the content of the ads. On numerous occasions I have found that the only occurence of my search is in an ad on the page.
Sounds like a great idea. What they really need to is delist companies that crap flood their results with dozens of websites which really only have one back end. An easy example of this is to find is done by plugging in a phone number. You will find dozens of web sites that crap flood the first several pages of Google result's and are obviously all for the same site.
I have a few newspaper websites that I visit, that, to view the content you have to have the ads displayed. The most annoying is a ad called "deal of the day" has this annoying way of working. You scroll half way down the page, start viewing something, and the deal of the day "curtain" scrolls up & down screwing up what you were viewing.
I opening my Google reader on my IGoogle which pops out a bubble windows with Slashdot's page and a GIANT Google ad at the top of the news page...Take a note from your own play book.
Answers.com used to be run by an Israeli company that offered semi-useful content but has since been bought by St. Louis based Announce Media which is nothing but an IT based whore house. They very carefully web spam the fuck out of everything. They're making money hand over foot using these practices.
They have a ton of search entry "sites" that are loaded with ads. They crank out several per week. It's sad because they have some decent developers. If they put effort into it, they could probably be equally or more profitable by doing something useful.
...says the company that just yesterday had a NYTimes.com ad that took up 3/4 of the page.
for my porn and . . .
TFA has ads at the top of the page that make me scroll down to see the content...
That site is completely covered in ads !
imgur.com/A026P
What is this "ads" are you talking about? I am actually surprised that given recent wave of crackdown on users by content monopolies, AdBlockPlus is not getting any attention from similarly formidable advertising behemots.
I think people underestimate gigantic influence of AdBlockPlus on the whole generation. I am getting my content exclusively from the Internet and after several years of using it I only can realize how massive this impact is by accidentally getting myself into AdBlockPlus-less situations. In each such case (occaisional glance at the television set while waiting for your oil change in the dealership, friend's computer, etc) I am astonished by the sheer amount of annoying garbage, which modern ads are.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And if those ads are purchased from Google? What then?
Google is not the only search engine in town, it's not a monopoly, and besides, if you feel it's bad value - you can start your own and make a ton of money. Do you think people will go to your own search engine if you do not 'punish websites with excessive ads' as opposed to using Google?
You can't handle the truth.
If you don't like the way Google deals with websites, vote with your feet and use Bing.
That's the only conservative/liberatarian way to do things.
Now stop whining like a faux news anchor and go fuck yourself.
True, it's only a matter of time until Microsoft discontinues extended support for Windows XP Service Pack 3, the last version of its PC operating system that will not run a version of Internet Explorer with HTML5 . That'll happen in the first half of 2014.
Is what ExpertS-exChange does any worse than what Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, and JSTOR do?
If Google is telling the truth, then I should no longer see any about.com results on the first page.
Although, I'd personally implement a penalty for Comic Sans as the page font
Would you give the same penalty for using such a decorative typeface only in heading elements, not in the body text?
Just start by removing ads directly linked to my last readed email, then you'll be able to remove excessive ads on other sites.
I can't call that English
Seems a bit dodgy to punish websites for hosting banner ads when your company takes out banner ads. It's entirely possible they are filtering based upon the source of ads as well and placing their 'paying' ad customers higher than sites which utilize competing services...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hopefully we can move on from pop-ups, pop-unders, push-ups and wrap-arounds (I made those last two up) and other intrusive ad mechanisms which send surfers running into the arms of ad blocking software makers. Move on into the realm of being treated like adult human beings and behaving like adult human beings. The realm of mutual respect, where we tolerate some advertising as essential to feed the machine and in return they don't burn their advertising slogans onto our retinas.
See subject-line: All the downmods in the world don't change facts. Technical computing facts the downmodder OBVIOUSLY CANNOT DISPROVE!
* All your "hit & run" downmods that have NO VALID TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATIONS (ala mistakes I made - none that I know of @ least)?
LMAO - Piss poor/weak... period.
APK
P.S.=> So MANY /. "naysayer" trolling "guru wannabes" have tried to disprove the facts listed in my post you down-moderated... none of have done so, for YEARS now!
(Hence, your effete "hit & run downmod" - whoever did it KNOWS they can't outthink me, OR disprove points I listed, so all they have? Effete technically unjustified moddowns... lol!)
... apk
See subject-line: All the downmods in the world don't change facts. Technical computing facts the downmodder OBVIOUSLY CANNOT DISPROVE...!
* All your "hit & run" downmods that have NO VALID TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATIONS (ala mistakes I made - none that I know of @ least)?
LMAO - Piss poor/weak... period.
APK
P.S.=> So MANY /. "naysayer" trolling "guru wannabes" have tried to disprove the facts listed in my post you down-moderated... none of have done so, for YEARS now!
(Hence, your effete "hit & run downmod" - whoever did it KNOWS they can't outthink me, OR disprove points I listed, so all they have? Effete technically unjustified moddowns... lol!)
... apk
They're not filtering(punishing) by content. They're filtering by Structure. Badly built pages rank lower.
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/
" 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.
Orange bothers me when reading. Can we penalize sites that have FF9966 through CC3300? Thanks.
i like how the site with the article about it has ads as tall as their header, before their header. derp derp.
Crappy search results make Google search look bad, and search users might go elsewhere. It's not altruism, it's customer retention.
You've got the relationship backwards. It's actually quality control on their product, to whit, eyeballs.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you've ever had the experience of a having a sales person promise to disclose important information to you as long as you go through their sales pitch, then you know how Google feels about this.
1 You should limit "sidebars" to one left and one right AND THESE SHOULD BE LESS THAN 15% OF THE PAGE COMBINED
2 if your webpages have more than 3 videos AND ANY OF THEM ARE SET TO AUTOPLAY then you need to cut them down
(and that includes the actual "article" video)
3 if your page content is divided into 3X5 card sized chunks just to make more pages YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG
4 if your pages are more than 20% ads or links to the rest of your site YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG (best layout is a bar with major sections ad then the CURRENT SECTIONs subheadings as a second bar)
5 you do not need to have the entire block of every "social" network more than once per section
and lastly the "below the fold rule" if you do not have the actual page content visible in at least the bottom 3/8 of the top screen
[font style = bold red blinking and bleeding] YOU ARE DOING IT VERY VERY VERY WRONG [/font style]
and a hint for you tune for 1024 wide screen since that gets you both the "mobile" and netbook segments (but have your style setup to allow for wider screens)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
From the article:
"... we've heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it's difficult to find the actual content, they arenâ(TM)t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away."
They're right. That applies to Google search results, too. For some popular searches (try "new movies" or "dvd player") the top of the page is full of Google ads, Google shopping, and Google categories. The right column is all ads. The first screen sometimes contains no actual search results at all.
So we fixed it. Our new Ad Limiter browser add-on limits Google (and Bing, Yahoo, etc.) search results to one ad per page.
Why one ad? All things in moderation. Sometimes an ad is useful, while a page of ads in your face is just annoying. Advertisers complain about ad blocking, and try to evade it. Limiting pages to one ad is a reasonable compromise.
Google's ad count per page has been steadily creeping up over the last few years. That's not good for users, advertisers, or Google. Remember what happened to Myspace, which reached new heights in ad clutter shortly before tanking.
Check it out and tell us what you think. Currently available for Firefox and Chrome.
(If you really want to block all ads, AdRater has a preferences option for that. You're in charge.)
1.) CrystalTech removed Jay Little's website for libeling myself and making death threats directed my way.
2.) Jay Little then moved to hosting it himself as he told them he would do in retaliation.
3.) Jay Little's just "bent" that I got the best of him in front of MILLIONS of readers @ Windows IT Pro forums on Exchange Servers (he claimed to be "EXPERT" on them, & "yours truly" SCHOOLED him), RamDisks/RamDrives, & Windows NT-based OS' error stopcodes too...
* Jay Little's mostly upset about his website being forcibly removed by CrystalTech.com his hosting provider for libel & death threats he directed my way as well out of his "geek angst" (pretty pitiful).
(He just did it again elsewhere as CrystalTech.com's staff told me he would out of "effete retaliation", lol... pitiful!)
---
There you go, you off topic done nothing with your LIFE stooge, Kristopeit.
APK
P.S.=> Perhaps I ought to tell everyone how you have AIDS & that you are a child molester, MichaelKristopeit? apk
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2634137&cid=38798483
APK
P.S.=> See subject-line, you off topic little goof... lol, 2 can play that game!
... apk
Without Comic Sans, webmasters would have to buy a Mac for each viewer to make the Chalkboard font available. What alternative to Comic Sans would you recommend that is either preinstalled on Windows PCs or available for @font-face embedding at no charge?
Three Engine Monte is pretty fun (yes, I am the life of the party), but I just tried it with five searches I've done over the past few days and I always found the Google results the most useful. Maybe I'm just used to "thinking like" Google; now that's a scary thought. I've used it every day for the past few years.
As an example, try "saturation current /monte" and look at the top five results. Google gives the correct Wikipedia page, the excellent hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu, another good result, and, unfortunately, answers.com, but I know to ignore that. Blekko gives the correct Wikipedia page, two good independent pages, and a Yahoo! Answers page, which was good this time but is usually more "miss" than "hit." Either way it's way ahead of Bing...oh God, Bing. Two wrong Wikipedia pages followed by thefreedictionary.com, answers.com, and Yahoo! Answers.
That's very representative of the other /montes that I played: Google kills with high Wikipedia placement and other specialty sites; Blekko equally or only slightly less useful; Bing WTF. I will admit that the Bing interface is "prettier" than Google but damn, Microsoft's search engineers have some work to do.
reducing the amount of ads on the YouTube site? it's not nice to look at..
If Google were to spin off DoubleClick as a once again independent company, Google Search would be a "publisher" under DC's AdSense program. To advertise on Google Search, people would buy AdWords packages from DC just as they do now from Google.
Face it: Ur a loser. I know it. Others reading know it. You know it.
For some reason your style of writing reminds me of someone who's an off topic little douchebag troll that can't disprove what was written and all he has is his childish immature off topic trolling bullshit to say instead, especially about the drugs (projecting your own issues). You obviously can't disprove what the poster wrote, so you're stuck with your off topic stupid trolling crap, nothing more.
But it still seems to be trivial to spam the heck out of Google.
Why don't you set up your own discussion board and then just sit there all day posting the same post about host files? Why do you piss everyone off by posting the same damn post again and again and again and again? We've all seem it a thousand times now...
(Oh why do I bother, you're obviously got an obsessive illness and you'll still be posting the same damn post about the damn hosts file in 20 years time unless you get treatment)
See subject-line - Complaints like yours don't stop facts being facts (Facts others may not be aware of, mind you).
APK
P.S.=> They're also a list of facts on the superiority, flexibility, ubiquity, & effectiveness of HOSTS files over AdBlock &/or DNS servers alone that nobody seems to be able to disprove either - fact... even though they "downmod" them!
... apk
"Why don't you set up your own discussion board and then just sit there all day posting the same post about host files?" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, @07:46AM (#38803615)
See subject-line - Complaints like yours don't stop facts being facts (Facts others may not be aware of, mind you) - Why don't YOU get on topic & quit being a troll instead of "dispensing your advice", which is useless (just like you)?
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"Why do you piss everyone off by posting the same damn post again and again and again and again?" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, @07:46AM (#38803615)
Ahem: Why don't you quit assuming you're the "voice of everyone" AND SPEAKING FOR EVERYONE?
---
"We've all seem it a thousand times now..." - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, @07:46AM (#38803615)
LOL, and NOT A SINGLE ONE OF YOU CAN DISPROVE THE FACTS POSTED IN IT (but you sure can "mod down" unjustifiably without computing technical criteria, lol)...
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"(Oh why do I bother, you're obviously got an obsessive illness and you'll still be posting the same damn post about the damn hosts file in 20 years time unless you get treatment)" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, @07:46AM (#38803615)
Do you have these things to your credit in order to dispense your 'insta/snap prognosis-diagnosis', Mr. "SiDeWaLk-ShRiNk of /."?
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1.) A PHD in the psychiatric sciences?
2.) A license to practice said sciences??
3.) A formal examination of myself given in a professional environs???
---
* No to all/each of the above to your name/credit???? Of course... lol!
APK
P.S.=> They're also a list of facts on the superiority, flexibility, ubiquity, & effectiveness of HOSTS files over AdBlock &/or DNS servers alone that nobody seems to be able to disprove either - fact... even though they "downmod" them!
, so, you assuming you can "speak for everyone"? Weak, effete, & useless (just like your lacking any computing technical information in your "critique" now, making you off topic)... apk
All those websites that contain the single article you're interested in in just a single column - all the other screen real estate being taken up with advertising!
@peetm
I'm pretty sure the journals don't deliberately serve up the whole journal to Google, then block it to you though.
It's fairly well documented on the Internet that they do. Google digs up citations on google scholar cloaking . Essentially, there's a tacit agreement that paywalled scholarly journals participating in the Google Scholar program are allowed to cloak.
Unfortunately they're also heavily linked and highly relevant, so they end up at the top.
It wouldn't be a problem if Google provided an option to always exclude search results that are noarchive .
Complete with 7 digit username registered? Please, lol.