Websites Forcing Visitors to Scroll Past Ads to Be Downgraded on Google

In response to user complaints, Google has made a change to its search algorithm that will downgrade websites with too many ads "above the fold" because it states this makes it hard for visitors to find desired content.

Matt Cutts writes on Google's blog:

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.

Although Google understands that above-the-fold ads are common practice on many websites, the change to the algorithm will affect less than 1 percent of websites, targeting those with an excessive amount of ads.

Several commenters on the blog post take issue with Google' algorithm modification:

• DanielRoofer: You are starving small websites of the opportunity to earn revenue while creaming it off yourself.
• Gordon: I am curious as to what counts as an 'ad' since we do have clients who prefer to have one large image as the main "content" / focal point of their homepage as their main call to action. I'm wondering how that sort of mentality would get treated as that page may be ranked down due to being flagged as an "ad" and in turn hurt the overall reputation of the site?
• vic: what's plastered at the top of every google results page? yeah that's right, nothing but ads. you people are seriously the biggest bunch of hypocrites on the face of planet earth.
• Ashvin Patel: on the same day that Google’s web search team announced this change, I received this message from Google’s AdSense team encouraging me to put more ads on my site.
• Unknown: How do you define “above the fold”? Even this blog “wastes” around 230px before any relevant content is appearing.

[H/T PC World]