Google Top Heavy Algo Updated
Google just unrolled a Top Heavy algorithm update aimed sites too much above the fold advertising.
The update was announced via a typical Matt Cutts Tweet reading:
Minor weather report: Update of goo.gl/OpIDL launching today. ~0.7% of English queries noticeably affected.
The original Top Heavy update was unrolled back in January and impacted less than one percent of queries. Google says the update was created in response to consumer complaints about having to scroll down on pages to find content. (Don’t think about the pettiness of it or you will go insane.)
In his original Top Heavy blog post (the same one that’s linked on today’s Tweet) Cutts described the update as follows:
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.
According to an article on SearchEngineLand this is the fourth algo update from Google since September 27. That list includes updates to Penguin, Panda and EMD.
Have you been impacted by Top Heavy 2? Let us know in the comments section below.
Tags: Google, Google Panda, Google Penguin, Matt Cutts
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Does anybody care what google does anymore ? Im past caring.
I agree, I own a small ISP and talk to many of my clients, I have asked them what they use for search and many are migrating to bing. I also when searching with google find myself on page 4 and 5 for relevant results.
Chasing every google update is a pain in the behind.
Rather than fret, I take the advice and suggestions as indications of what should be done to make the user experience better. Too many ads on the top does make your site look too spammy. It IS a good idea to provide a content ‘lure towards the top.
This ‘less clutter’ was the subject of CAP webinar too!
But it is also neat to see a google backlash. Even though bing TV ads say they are better than google, they are still the leader.
Had one site affected. The number of adsense ads is low but the in house cross domain ads is high. Trying to figure out if Google is seeing these inhouse ads are counted as making the page top heavy. Closest I can guess so far is anything downloaded through javascript might be seen as a possible ad but I’m still looking.
I’ve seen an impact on a site of mine that has no ads, but has a large images at the top of each page that pushes the content down. The impact on the user is similar, but this seems extreme.