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Measuring the usefulness of a page by percentage of screen real estate only seems useful if the user is looking or clicking randomly around the screen. The stru

by chaz 13y ago

Measuring the usefulness of a page by percentage of screen real estate only seems useful if the user is looking or clicking randomly around the screen. The structure, layout, and clarity of communication are far more important. > 7% is all that’s left for the entrepreneurs and restaurantuers who believed Google over the years when they were told that good business with well structured pages would be able to get in front of potential customers searching the internet. I'm really curious how the author would propose to fix this. Even with all of the other stuff cut away, there are only still 10 blue links to give.

dublinben 13y ago
Screen percentage is also incredibly dependent on your screen size. When I replicate their examples, I get far more 'organic' searches on my screen, because I have four times the screen real estate. Google has to delicately balance their advertising with organic results, and this balance works less well at smaller screen sizes.
lazyjones 13y ago
> Measuring the usefulness of a page by percentage of screen real estate only seems useful if the user is looking or clicking randomly around the screen. You should tell Google that. They claim to be penalizing web sites with too many ads "above the fold": http://searchengineland.com/google-may-penalize-ad-heavy-pages-100601 http://searchengineland.com/google-may-penalize-ad-heavy-pag... The bigotry in this has been pointed out by many people already ... Google is basically forcing other sites to use less attractive advertising while offering extremely annoying ads "above the fold" themselves, smells like unfair competition to me.
- brlewis 13y ago
  Try thinking about this from the user's perspective rather than the site owner's perspective. How do you like it when you click on an ad that looks like it has useful information behind it, and you come to a page that's mostly ads?
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > How do you like it when you click on an ad that looks like it has useful information behind it, and you come to a page that's mostly ads? Was that a Freudian slip? If I click on an ad that doesn't fulfill my expectation, the advertiser failed and will feel it, the market fixes this in the long run. If I click on a search result (perhaps you meant that) and I get to see mostly ads, I can a) install an ad blocker, b) go back and click on the next result, c) ignore the ads or actually click on the ads. But there's nothing about this that warrants special treatment for Google's pages, which are full of ads. If Google thinks, users will not like pages full of ads, they should stop cluttering their search results with them. If they don't, they're just giving themselves an unfair advantage over the indexed pages.

by chaz 13y ago

dublinben 13y ago

Screen percentage is also incredibly dependent on your screen size. When I replicate their examples, I get far more 'organic' searches on my screen, because I have four times the screen real estate. Google has to delicately balance their advertising with organic results, and this balance works less well at smaller screen sizes.

lazyjones 13y ago

> Measuring the usefulness of a page by percentage of screen real estate only seems useful if the user is looking or clicking randomly around the screen. You should tell Google that. They claim to be penalizing web sites with too many ads "above the fold": http://searchengineland.com/google-may-penalize-ad-heavy-pages-100601 http://searchengineland.com/google-may-penalize-ad-heavy-pag... The bigotry in this has been pointed out by many people already ... Google is basically forcing other sites to use less attractive advertising while offering extremely annoying ads "above the fold" themselves, smells like unfair competition to me.

brlewis 13y ago
Try thinking about this from the user's perspective rather than the site owner's perspective. How do you like it when you click on an ad that looks like it has useful information behind it, and you come to a page that's mostly ads?
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > How do you like it when you click on an ad that looks like it has useful information behind it, and you come to a page that's mostly ads? Was that a Freudian slip? If I click on an ad that doesn't fulfill my expectation, the advertiser failed and will feel it, the market fixes this in the long run. If I click on a search result (perhaps you meant that) and I get to see mostly ads, I can a) install an ad blocker, b) go back and click on the next result, c) ignore the ads or actually click on the ads. But there's nothing about this that warrants special treatment for Google's pages, which are full of ads. If Google thinks, users will not like pages full of ads, they should stop cluttering their search results with them. If they don't, they're just giving themselves an unfair advantage over the indexed pages.