Google Adsense Pushed Below The Fold

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Penalising ‘Made for AdSense’ Sites Even More!

For those people with ‘AdSense‘ sites that got decimated in the last few Google updates – it won’t get any better. Google are pursuing their ideal of quality information for the end user and their experience when he/she arrives on a page, even if it means reducing their own advertising arena.

In not so many words Google has implied that you must NOT put ‘too much’ AdSense above the fold on your site and if you do, then you will be penalized in the search engines.

They are now believed to include it in their algorithm as one of their ranking factors (see here).

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.

Simply, Google wants you to increase your CTR(Click Thru Rate) as much as possible which benefits the advertisers, but not so much that it is detrimental to your visitors.

Users don’t want to be presented with loads of ads when they are searching for information.

They want the information they came for!

How Much Adsense Above The Fold?

I don’t use AdSense on this site, but I do have lots of other sites with AdSense that make money for me that are found by organic search in Google..

Quickly, I revisited them and altered them to satisfy the Google requirement. By looking at my stats it was actually quite easy to remove the minimally active components and make a better ‘above the fold’ presentation. Easily done with WordPress sites.

Adsense Position Guidelines

While the heat map is ‘famous’ – please pay careful attention to the following:

Best Practices for laying out your site and your AdSense ads

…the message is subtle. If you need Google – best play by their rules.

So, the question here is:

Should you take a look at all of your sites and make sure that you don’t have just AdSense plastered all over the start above the fold on each page?

YES.

Should you take another look at all of your sites and check that they are showing the user what they are looking for?

YES

Do I think that this is just the next major step in Google actively penalizing ‘Made For AdSense’ sites?

YES, absolutely!
Good luck with your AdSense if you use it.