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The Great "Above the Fold" Algorithm Misunderstanding
Many, many moons ago, in an age long-forgotten, there was this thing called "The Newspaper," which reported the current on-goings to the masses. This was particularly valuable to advertisers, who wanted their ad to display in the prime real estate on the newspaper, which was the area "above the fold."
Unlike the current sophisticated tablets of the present, newspapers were printed on paper and were quite large, so they were folded in half vertically and then horizontally, stacked one on top of another, and binded to be ready for sale. The side that faced up when stacked was the area that was above the fold.
Not everyone opened up the newspaper, but anyone who even glanced at it saw this supremely valuable area and any advertisements placed on it. The same goes for webpages today. When a browser opens up a website, the part of the page that is automatically visible to the viewer is called the "above the fold." Once again, this is prime real estate and people like to cram as many ads up there as they can, which pushes down the main content instead of serving the viewers with exactly what they came to see.
Google's Algorithm Tweak
So earlier this year, Google found an interesting way to help clean up the SERPs of the trash that was ranking highly for all kinds of silly terms. People have spent quite a few years creating tons and tons of "micro-niche" sites. They targeted long-tail terms like "red stockings with hearts" and they'd try to buy the "dot com/net/org" domain for that term and smash out about 3 articles, shoot some backlinks at it, and call it a day.
Now, what they did was slap two huge ad blocks right next to each other right underneath the header of the site. What this did was push the main content down the page and trick some people into thinking the ads were the main content which increased the click through rates. People only pull this stunt when they get paid-per-click. No respectable webmaster who has any pride in his or her website is going to shove ads in your face. Google realized this as well.
Google had collected tons of information from users, including what browsers were being used and the most common monitor resolutions. They used this to calculate exactly how much of the screen should be considered above the fold and then implemented this into their algorithm, using their classifications of main content, supplementary content, and advertisements. This is what was announced in their classic, vague manner, and it led to much misunderstanding. I suppose this is usually the goal.
The Above-the-Fold Misunderstanding
Google rolled out this algorithm tweak and folks went hay-wire, as usual. The forums were abuzz and the SEO world was aflame. People couldn't quite figure out exactly what was going on, but they knew it had something to do with their crappy "double ad wall" at the top of their sites. The only reason these cruddy micro niche sites were worth a darn was the high CTR that turned into a decent return on their investment. But without the double ad wall up top, they were essentially worthless.
Below is an example of this double ad block pushing down the main content, and to make matters worse, above the navigation menu there is another block of ads. This site is completely misleading in its intent as well. How is that a business?
Regardless, people started writing up bots to go through and change the ad locations on their hundreds of micro niche site Wordpress installs. They essentially wrote their own doom, which is the beauty of Google's vagueness when they announce these changes. They get everyone to panic and destroy their own spammy businesses. So what happened?
Spammers misunderstood the above the fold algo tweak. They thought it had to do with how many ads were displaying above the fold. While this is true, it wasn't the variable that counted, and if folks would do some scientific testing instead of conjecture and speculation, they'd have realized that it had more to do with the "main content" variable. It wasn't about how many ads were displaying up top, but how much main content was showing. You see the subtle difference?
So What Should You Do?
Never panic. Never do anything apocalyptic. Collect data and analyze. In this case, had these people done it, they'd have figured out that they could, in fact, leave some ads above the fold, thereby maintaining some reasonable CTR and ROI. The problem: no main content above the fold. The solution: Get some up there!
That doesn't mean remove the ads. It means get some or more main content above the fold. One of the best solutions is to left or right align the advertisements so that the content floats arounds the ads, much like the image at the top of this article. This keeps an advertisement above the fold and keeps your CTR from crashing to nothingness. If you choose the best performing ad block (you figure out which it is), you can probably perform just as well, if not better at times, as the double ad wall.
So if you freaked out and destroyed your micro niche earnings, go back and fix it. Sites still rank fine with ads above the fold. The key thing is to stop fighting against your employer, the almighty Search Engine. The Great Giver of Traffic will treat you well if you treat your business as such, and not as a churn and burn "get money" scheme. Don't treat your viewers like crap. Don't shove ads down their throat and do provide quality information. If this is too difficult to do, then don't scale micro niche sites into the hundreds. Work on two or three awesome sites and get into the social game as well. Your business plan is ultimately going to fail as computer processing power continues to grow exponentially and Google tweaks along with it. Get with the times!
Originally Posted on March 13th, 2012 on
