Google’s latest update has been causing quite a stir (as usual) and has resulted in many people going crazy (as usual) editing their page layouts and changing themes and what-not. Lets have a look and see what all the fuss is about.

Taken from their blog (I’ve highlighted the most important parts) –
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In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an [highlight bgcolor=”” textcolor=””]algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.[/highlight]

As we’ve mentioned previously, 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. [highlight bgcolor=”” textcolor=””]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.[/highlight] 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.

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. [highlight bgcolor=”” textcolor=””]This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree[/highlight], 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.

[highlight bgcolor=”” textcolor=””]This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally.[/highlight] That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly. You can use our Browser Size tool, among many others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.

If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

[highlight bgcolor=”” textcolor=””]Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus on specific algorithm tweaks[/highlight]. This change is just one of the over 500 improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. As always, please post your feedback and questions in our Webmaster Help forum.

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What Does ‘Above The Fold Mean’?

Above the fold means the part of the web page you see in your browser without scrolling down.  So using this webpage as an example, here is what I see above the fold.  If I wanted to read anymore text I would have to scroll down, the rest of the content on the page would be considered ‘below the fold’.

Who Will This Affect?

I personally haven’t been affected by this update, I’m still ranking high for terms that I did previously before this update and my lower ranking terms are climbing steadily.  All of my sites have ads above the fold.  It would be stupid not to have so as most of the time this is where you get the best CTR, Google knows and appreciates this.  YOU CAN STILL HAVE ADS ABOVE THE FOLD.  Just don’t plaster all your ads above the fold.  If you have 3 adsense blocks before you have some content then yes you could be hit by this update.

How Can I Test My Page?

Using this little tool you can see how much of the page various screen sizes will see when they visit your page, it’s only a rough guide but should give you some idea on whether you have too many ads above the fold.

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

Conclusion

Another good update from Google, I hate visiting pages that have ads plastered all over them.  To stay safe do not have all 3 adsense blocks BEFORE your content on your pages and you will be fine.