We’ve all seen them. Flashy, blinky and starburst style graphics from the 90’s made to get you to click and buy something. More annoyances than actually enhancements to user experience. Yet the latest Google algorithm update is watching this too.
And yet these ugly ads still exist on websites making the rest of the site look dated and spammy as well.
Enter, Google page algorithm update.
Google has updated its page algorithm that can detect poorly placed content and ads. Designed to combat ads above the fold (the first thing users see on a screen without scrolling) now is looking for bad page layouts that are not user friendly. Users are frustrated at sites that have bad layouts and make the content unreadable and difficult to find.
Or have too many distracting ads that don’t compliment the content on the page or the sites overall design, in my opinion.
Google added the page layout algorithm in January 2012, and updated it in October 2012.
Quoted from Google’s blog:
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.
Here’s Matt Cutt’s latest tweet on the update.
Read the blog post from Google
SEO folks: we recently launched a refresh of this algorithm: http://t.co/KKSXm8FqZW Visible to outside world on ~Feb. 6th.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 10, 2014
Quality in Design matters
While understanding that it’s important to businesses to get the coveted page one position on Google, it’s often achieved by any means deemed necessary. Usually that means sacrificing user experience.
Now there is a price to pay for that.
Element 502 is not just a web design company, we design with the idea that users will use your site and return often. We also design and build with the intention of being search engine friendly and complying with Google. Both Design and Development are important, and just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
When you have a website it’s important to think about the small details, and that’s what we do. We build for form and function. Have a project? Contact us below.
