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Comment by joejohnson | Hacker News Reader

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joejohnson

Yep, only Google's search results page gets to be top-heavy with ads.

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Completely true.

http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=breast+r...

There are 11 paid links and 10 organic. At least 75% of the above-the-fold content is ads.

I don't see any ads actually.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/361483/archive/google_search.png

No shock there — you're running AdBlock.

Sorry, I completely forgot about that. It's amazing how different everything looks with it off. I think I'm going to keep it on.

This is how it looks without AdBlock.

http://imgur.com/3pOyK

To be fair, I only see the three ads above and none on the right. Still, is this what Google refers to as 'above fold' location ?

Yep, that is what they're referring to. The term comes from newspapers, which are shipped folded across the middle, so that only the half of the front page that's "above the fold" is immediately visible. The web design community adopted the term with essentially the same meaning: the part of the page that's visible when you first get there. So yes, those ads are decidedly above the fold.

not in MA with my google cookies-- only have one above organic-- I have the stuff on the right, though

You use Adblock, yes? That's kinda the whole point.

Only one ad, no Adblock: http://i.imgur.com/35ZjK.jpg

I think Google likes me :P

Strange. I was like OP. 11 ads (3 top, 8 side), 9 results, 3 images.

This was my experience as well. Are you outside of the US?

Yes.

Go here: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences - go down to demographics. Google thinks I'm a 35 y.o. male, interested in Sci-Fi, and gadgets.

I'm guessing google thinks you won't get breast reduction.

"No demographic categories are associated with your ads preferences so far."

I don't really know what this implies in terms of ads, but I'm not complaining ;)

They're also blocked by robots.txt, so feel free to load up on advertising on your pages you don't want indexed.

Google is penalizing sites that violate their standards of top-heaviness. I don't think it's fair to call them hypocrites because they don't meet your standards.

The article shows the "credit cards" results page with (at his resolution) 4 top ads, 4 full and 1 partial side ad, and 1 partial result shown. If 9 ads to 1 line of content isn't top-heavy with ads according to google's standards, then their standards are worthless.

If that results page were even close to the average case for Google, I'll agree with you. But it's not, so it doesn't really prove much of anything. Google isn't going to penalize your whole site just because one page out of a million is a little over the line.

This argument sort of rubs me the wrong way. It makes perfect sense for a search engine to penalize pages that are ad-top-heavy; Why should it matter what Google does on it's own pages? I get it, practice what you preach, but I'm pretty sure Google is not concerned with the SEO of their results pages. The whole argument seems to be reaching for something that isn't there.

Disagree. I whitelist google and all subdommains with adblock because a moderate number of text-only ads is both reasonable and can even be useful. By contrast, many sites seem to use 80%+ of their bandwidth on advertising cruft and serve pitifully thin content.

Google search has ads on the top, but it isn't top-heavy.

Yeah, this is awfully rich considering where G's money comes from.

Google's money comes from providing things to click that are relevant. Sometimes those are ads, but most times those are search results. If you click a search result and see nothing but ads, you're less inclined to continue to use Google. A balance has to be made between advertising and non-advertising, and all ads is not the right balance.

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