Thread: How does Google define an ad heavy site?

There is some indication that Google will start penalizing sites/blogs that are ad heavy.

How does Google define an ad heavy site?

How do they know the difference between an affiliate link and a legitimate outgoing link to a resource site? Are they using the ? parameter common in so many affiliate links as an indicator that the page is heavy with ads?

Also, are they judging bloggers who use Google adsense? There are already very strict adsense rules against overcrowding ads onto a page.

bad news?

Originally Posted by moneymakingmom

There is some indication that Google will start penalizing sites/blogs that are ad heavy.

Where is this indication? and I guess FaceBook will be one of the FIRST penalized sites?

Originally Posted by Smoke

Where is this indication? and I guess FaceBook will be one of the FIRST penalized sites?

Hopefully so! lol

According to the inside search blog at:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...provement.html

As we’ve mentioned previously, 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.

So it seems that blogs/sites that devote the top of their site to mostly ads rather than serving up content will suffer in rankings. Possibly ads on the side bar, just above viewable content and below or integrated into the content would not count against a site, just so long as the content were easily viewable above the fold and the user did not have to scroll to get to it.

I guess they judge it based on ratio of number of ads shown per article !
It should be similar to catch a spammer, who uses excessive keywords in there article..

Originally Posted by shek

I guess they judge it based on ratio of number of ads shown per article !
It should be similar to catch a spammer, who uses excessive keywords in there article..

Also based on placement of ads. If a user has to scroll to get to actual content, that would possibly be grounds for a penalty.