Attention: Page Lay-out Update – October 9, 2012
Change seems to be not permanent in the search engine as the algorithm is dancing “up-side-down” with successive heavy updates that boggled the world of SEO in the past days and until perhaps at this moment. It’s somehow like a novel with unending chapters and lots of twists, and no webmaster can expect what would come next.
Would the Google continue to change the rule every time something becomes obsolete, or when there’s a new trend in the web that needs to be harmonized with the need of users and the efficiency of the engine? There’s really no such thing as stagnancy; all is dynamic when it comes to the updates, right? But let’s take this as premise to anticipate the unknown by weighing the current “feeds” to know how heavy they are for the webmasters with common optimization strategies or practices.
A Recap on Top Heavy
After 8 months from the first page lay-out algorithm changes, here comes the top heavy 2.
What is Top Heavy 2?
Perhaps, it’s more than just heavy for some; the updates might have been a burden to those whose sites were affected with the page algorithm update or what is now popularly tagged as the “Top Heavy”. This update is quite strange, or maybe dreadful, since its main focus is to penalize the pages with more ads than content. But nevertheless, it did not shock the webmasters who have enhanced their sites since after Google had initially announced such Page Layout filter in January. However, what are just indefinite are the subsequent updates since the end week of September until the last day. Presumably, many still await for the upcoming feeds on tweets of Matt Cutts.
As you are already aware of, it’s really the updates that will help you save your site from being penalized. Taking into account the tweets of Matt, for instance, it was quite beneficial to know that the current update affects 0.7 percent of English-language web queries. Why this happens? Apparently, it can be explained by the original post of Google last January. It was clear therein that their team had received complaints from users about their difficulty in finding the actual content of the site they are looking for, and they’re not happy with such kind of experience. For who can be gratified or satisfied when, after clicking the link and scrolling the page, all that you can see are ads rather than content?
To know more about page lay-out algorithm you can see it here .
Its Focus
That’s ultimately the issue raised by users that perhaps led to the current top heavy update of the search engine. And it is obvious that this is congruent to the updated webmaster guidelines by Google published before this one comes. And interestingly, the main focus is the satisfaction of users, and not the operation of the existing sites. They want to answer the demand of users in seeing the content right away, and thus, if your site’s ads outnumber its content, then you really have something to worry or be frightened about with this new Top Heavy 2.
If you were not penalized by Top Heavy 1 last January, then you have to be aware with this new one. Both have the same function, but their impacts in the search engine ranking differ; the former had an impact of less than 1% in English searches and the latter is fixed on 0.7%. At any rate, they still mean a bad thing when your site’s ranking significantly drop from the top.
What to do to avoid getting penalized?
It is simple, just focus more on your content than putting ads on your website or don’t spend 25% of space for ads. Remember always the logic why this is existing and that is to provide a beneficial user experience or making your site valuable to users and not as having too many ads that are annoying.
On the other side, Google says that if you have already made changes to your site after it was affected by the top heavy, you still have to wait for the response or outcome until the next refresh of the said page filter. Anyway, the Google team had already promised to provide more alerts about algorithm changes.
Just stay updated because the rules are getting heavier than ever!