A Few Thoughts Re: Google Quality Content (Part 9) – Does Excessive Advertisement Distract from the Webpage Content?

In this post, I will raise some talking points with respect to advertisement distractions in a Webpage. 

Another question The Google Quality Filter uses in the analysis of assessing the Webpage quality is:

Does an article have an excessive amount of advertisements that distract from or interfere with the main content?

The Google Search Engine will analyze the credibility of a Webpage by analyzing the number of advertisements in a Webpage.

Placing advertisements is very common for many of our Webpages.  When advertisements are placed to a normal degree, the Google algorithm varies only slightly; however, Webpages that excessively use too many advertisements make it very difficult for a reader to find the actual page content.

Google support states:

“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.”

Clearly, too many advertisements will result in a decrease of traffic, and unfortunately, Google will decrease your entire site and not just particular pages.  When we make modifications to decrease the amount of advertisement in the Webpage, Google makes a note of it when it next visits our Webpages; however, it can take several weeks until the new changes are implemented and integrated into their overall ranking system.

Webpages with excessive advertisements are:

• A nuisance;

• Perceived as spam and cluttered;

• Decreases the advertisement value and hurt advertisement sales;

• Result in lower click-through rates;

Our visitors probably will dislike the use of advertisements over content, and the probability of returning to our Webpage will be quite low.

On the other hand, it would be a waste to under-utilize your website real estate. You do not want to be too apprehensive about having more than one ad on your website either.  Once we determine the optimum balance of content and advertisement, our advertisers and readers will be more content - especially if the advertisements are services and/or products that interest them.