The Google Page Layout Algorithm

The original blogpost issued by Google had this to say:

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

How does Google assess the content above the fold? It's believed they use image recognition software. Around the time this algo was released, they also had a preview function in the SERPs, where if you hovered your mouse on a link it showed you an image snapshot of the site without clicking through. They've since removed the image snapshot, but are likely still taking them to assess the site.

When Searchenginewatch asked Matt Cutts how it worked, he had this to say:

"It's true that we do have to re-crawl and process the pages to determine their layout and how they've changed. But we're also at the stage where we're still doing off-line processing and then the results of the algorithm are pushed out. So it actually depends on both the re-crawl/reprocessing as well as the offline cycle of computing before then pushing that data."

So this algo doesn't run in real time - they need to assess pages offline. That means that if you get caught out by it, you likely have to wait a while until they next do a batch of offline processing to reassess you.

As you can see in the image above, there is very little text above the fold. In fact there is more text in the navigation at the very top than in the first part of the content.

If you have a layout like this, then add text to the description under the title, and add an introduction that wraps around the ad. White space is bad as far as the page layout algorithm goes.

This second layout is more subtly wrong. It actually belongs to me. I thought that as I had an intro, everything was fine - but there is still too little text above the fold.

In particular this page needs more text under the title and above the ad.

The improvement is quite subtle - I've added more text to the blurb under the title, and I've added some more text to the intro to lengthen it.

In total there's about 30 extra words.

Is this enough to beat the Page Layout algorithm? Yes, if it's replicated on every page on your site. Ideally the page would have as much text at the top as the page you are currently reading does, so I might go back and edit some more.

Google have promised that they will be tightening their Page Layout Algorithm even further in their next batch of updates - so don't wait to make the changes.

Yes!

The above image is a screenshot from SEMRush which estimates traffic based on Wizzley's "visibility" in the search results - that is, they look to see how many search terms this site is ranking highly for.

As you can see, it hit an all-time high in December 2011. The Christmas traffic faded back normally in January 2012 - but from the end of January, there is a steep drop, as the page layout penalty takes hold. This is bourne out from traffic to my pages too.

Lets hope the penalty gets lifted as people amend their pages to conform to Google's guidance on having more content "above the fold".

If you can do just one thing, it is to go through your pages and make sure you have used up ALL the characters in the meta description (which Wizzley displays under the title). Having as much text as possible above the ad seems to be important to this algo.

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