Ads above the fold penalty. Should I request reinclusion?
-
HI!
My site has been losing traffic slowly for about 18 months. But it was in January 19 that was hit big time.
My site has a lot of ads, including two 300x250 above the fold ads that were very lucrative for me.
After January 19, I decided to remove only one ad of those two, but no change was reflected in the traffic.
It is obvious that I needed to remove the other ad, but I didn't do it for two reasons.
-
I still earn money from that ad and removing it would result in serious problems.
-
A webmaster friend of mine that was hit too by this penalty, removed the ads and tried all sort of stuff to regain the lost traffic with NO LUCK in several months. He has unique and excellent content. So, after seeing his experience I didn't want to touch my biggest source of income and leave it as it is.
My site has other problems that concerns Panda and maybe Penguin, and since yesterday I've been starting to fix them.
Is it a good idea to request a reinclusion to check if I was manually penalized, without being previously notified by GWMT of any problem in my site?
Thanks in advance,
Enrique
-
-
Yes, I have it all. Not sure about incoming spammy links. I did almost everything to my site (datafeeds, lots of ads, duplicate content, etc.) but never engaged in spammy links.
I will try to find some other way to show ads and see what happens.
Thanks!
-
Google DOES allow ads above the fold. As long as your are not slapping the visitors face with your ads and the visitor has zero problems finding your page content without scrolling then ads are allowed.
If Google did not allow ads above the fold then most of the content providers on the web would go bankrupt.
My best is that you have a duplicate content, a skimpy content, a thin affiliate or links problem.
-
Hi Enrique,
Google don't give manual penalties for too many ads above the fold. Their manual penalities are for blatent violations of their webmaster guidlines, so things like buying links, cloaking or hidden text.
Although they recommend not putting too many ads above the fold from a user experience perspective, it's certainly not one of their terms and conditions and wouldn't be the cause of a penalty.
If you friend tried removing his ads and saw no recovery, it could be one of several issues:
-
It might not have been the excessive ads that were causing his problem
-
If it was the ads, he may not have removed them for long enough for the Panda update to be refreshed
One very important thing though; the ads above the fold issue and the Panda issue are the same thing.
It's the same algorithm update that is focused on user experience. It is nothing manual, and the only way to recover is to fix all the issues and wait for the refresh.
If you're fixing the site then that's a great start. With a bit of luck your new site will regain the rankings with your ads still in place, and then everyone is happy
Thanks,
David
-
-
Thanks David, and yes, I've been hit by panda and I know my site's weakness (most of it!). But it is difficult to make changes when your site was built 10 years ago with a different web in mind. I'm rebuilding it again (a whole new site with THIS CURRENT web in mind).
But I was not speaking about Panda specifically, I meant the "Ads above the fold" issue.
In January 19 my site was hit very hard by that update. Very hard. That was why I thought about a penalty.
You may think I'm dumb or something. I could fix it by just removing the ads an that's it.
But as I mentioned in my first post, a webmaster I work closely with had the same problem and removing the ads didn't help him a bit.
So, that's why I was wondering if it was a manual penalty, and requesting reinclusion was a solution to confirm it.
Thanks!
Enrique
-
Hi Enrique,
Firstly, the Panda update which you mention isn't penalty, it's an algorithmic updated that Google implemented with the general aim of reducing the number of poor quality sites in the search results.
By poor quality; they mean sites that have thin or duplicate content, sites that contain excessive advertising, and sites that are poorly designed or constructed.
If it is Panda (which it sounds like it could be considering the 18 month decline), a re-inclusion request won't help. This update is refreshed periodically (roughly every 4-6 weeks), so if you had fixed the issues on your site you would see your rankings return when it was refreshed.
The main issues to fix are generally around the quality and originality of the content, however depending how excessive your advertising is this might need to be addressed to.
There are some great resources out there for finding out if it is Panda that's effecting your site, and if so how to recover. My personal favourite is here on SeoMoz by Cyrus Shepherd:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/beat-google-panda
From speaking to many Webmasters, the one thing I have found is that the people that recover are the ones who are willing to take a critical look at their own website and really own up to it's weaknesses. For example, you say your friend tried excellent content, but by what standard was it excellent? His own standards might be very different than that of Google.
The best way to stay ahead of updates like Panda is by being your own worst critic, and constantly challenging yourself to make your website the best it can possible be.
David
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Manual Action - When requesting links be removed, how important to Google is the address you're sending the requests from?
We're starting a campaign to get rid of a bunch of links, and then submitting a disavow report to Google, to get rid of a manual action. My SEO vendor said he needs an @email domain from the website in question @travelexinsurance.com, to send and receive emails from vendors. He said Google won't consider the correspondence to and from webmasters if sent from a domain that is not the one with the manual action penalty. Due to company/compliance rules, I can't allow a vendor not in our building to have an email address like that. I've seen other people mention they just used a GMAIL.com account. Or we could use a similar domain such as @travelexinsurancefyi.com. My question, how critical is it that the domain the correspondence with the webmasters be from the exact website domain?
Technical SEO | | Patrick_G0 -
Can new content be added to a url which has a 301 redirect?
I am working on a site which is currently being redesigned. The home page currently ranks highly for relevant search terms, although on the new site the content on this page will be removed. The solution I was considering, to preserve rankings, was to move the content on the home page to a new url, and use a 301 redirect to help preserve rankings for that particular page. The question I have therefore, is am I able to add new content to the home page, and have this page freshly indexed accordingly? Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks, Matt.
Technical SEO | | MatthewA0 -
Google Penalty Investigation
Hi All, I've recently had a google penalty, and have spent a long while working through tying up any loose ends with my site (I'm building a new one, so you'll still see some probs on my current one). My search referrals do slowly seem to be recovering, but only for variations of terms that are similar to 'bike repair'. Now, my site does primarily offer bike repair advice, so that's a good thing, but I'm not yet ranking for any of my specific keywords. One example is that I used to rank quite high for the term 'schrader valve'. Is this a signal of anything in particular? Or can I not read anything specific into this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | madegood0 -
Is it worth adding schema markup to articles?
I know things like location, pagination, breadcrumbs, video, products etc have value in using schema markup. What about things like articles though? Is it worth all the work involved in having the pages mark up automatically? How does this effect SEO, and is it worthwhile? Thanks, Spencer
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Penalty on two primary keywords
Hi Seomoz, I have been strugling to get www.texaspoker.dk out of what seems to be a keyword specific penalty (we are on page 5 on "poker" and "online poker"). First I thought it was Penguin related, but I'm not so sure any longer. I have removed all the bad links to my site possible (it's not easy to get other people to remove links, I can tell you), and I have reported all the links that I would like google to "ignore" (reconsideration request) ... all in all I have requested for reconsideration 5 times, and - despite some small changes - I got the same answer every time. We violate the quality guide lines and we should be looking for unnatural links pointing to our site. If any one - by having a look at our site - have any idea what could be wrong, please don't hold back, we would love to hear your point of view. Right now we are in the middle of making our partners take off their site wide links to us (the partners you'll find if you click the flags to the right in the top of the home page). On Texaspoker.dk we only link to the partners from the home page, but maybe we should consider to take of even these links? No one is really clicking on them anyway. Another thing, which is only under consideration, is to ask our partners from Betxpert.com (with whom we have exchanged our news feed - you will find their feed if you schroll down the home page) to set the feed to "no follow" and do the same our selves. What do you think of this thought? As far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with the on page optimization, but maybe some one can see what I don't see? Again - what ever thoughts you guys may have - shoot ... i'm ready to take all bulets 🙂 Thanks in advance! Nicolai, Texaspoker.dk
Technical SEO | | MPO0 -
Google Alerts almost never alerts me to my own pages being added.
Hello All, So i have a fairly decent blog http://www.symbolphoto.com/bl*g/ * replace with o. However, i'm posting to it once/twice a week and i never ever see in my google alerts my pages being included. I do include my search terms in my pages "Bston Wedding Photgrapher" yet, my page is never included. What on earth am i doing wrong? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! -Brendan
Technical SEO | | symbolphoto0 -
Home page penalty?
What does it mean when your home page has a penalty? I have a site that has good rankings for many pages, but my home page seems to be penalized by Google. I tried searching for my home page URL in Google, www.xxxxxx.com and my page doesn't show up, but sub pages do show up? What would cause this penalty and how do you correct this issue.
Technical SEO | | tadden0 -
From your perspective, what's wrong with this site such that it has a Panda Penalty?
www.duhaime.org For more background, please see: http://www.seomoz.org/q/advice-regarding-panda http://www.seomoz.org/q/when-panda-s-attack (hoping the third time's the charm here)
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0