What changed exactly cannot be told. Google are very clingy to their secrets.

Maybe that’s why, they are the most widely used search engine. The big G.

What really happened is, that sites rich in ADs above the fold, got penalized in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and sites that were once with enormous Page Rank as 8 and 9 got kicked to pages 2 and 3 of SERP. Stolen content sites (Scrappers and Autoblogs) almost disappeared. Article zines suffered.

What means “above the fold” ?

Imagine a newspaper folded in two (as it usually sells). The visible part, that is not folded is “above the fold”. Where the big Header titles are.

What it means “Above the fold” for a web site? The visible part when you load the page in the browser. (before you start to scroll down)

In present days, the casual Internet surfer has attention span of ~10 seconds per web page. To be sure he will notice the ADs and Affiliate sales on your site, you need to place it where all the users will look first.

Above the fold.

This makes sure the user will sometimes click ADs and your advertisers will be happy.

Unfortunately, human greed is endless. There were dozens of high Page Rank sites that started exploiting the limits. There was NOTHING else but ADs above the fold. The big G put a limit of 3 AD units per web page.

Then the Scrapers and Auto-bloggers came. They had nothing but ADs and stolen content, scrapped from everywhere. That’s why, Google had to make sure spammers get below their fold and original content gets up.

The Farmer update.

This update, also called “Google Panda update” penalized the sites that have so much ADs above the fold, that are so abundant on affiliate links and banners, that barely or no real useful information is visible.

How they did it? 80% of all ADs served worldwide are Google AdSense. It’s quite easy. They already have the data.

And then came social buttons, that say “Tweeet“, “I like this” and “I plus’d this“, which told even more about user experience. Frequently shared sites get better results in SERP. Never appreciated sites get penalized.

It’s all about user experience. AD Spamming useless sites get down, Unique content-rich sites get up. As simple as this.

Content farms, that have thousands of SEO optimized articles rich on keywords but poor on actual meaning, answering NO question, giving nothing but general talk – got penalized. Why? Because articles spanning on 2000 words take time to read and if they don’t help you at all – it is simply time loss. (zero user experience).

Article resellers, that have articles for sale got penalized too. Why? Because they sell (non-exclusively) the same article to 100 people for $20 per sale. What really happens is – 100 personal blogs with equal articles. Who the hell needs to read the same article in all his friends blogs? (again – bad user experience)

So, how to avoid penalty?

• Never. Literally. Never copy and paste content, that is not yours. Even bought content, needs to be unique. Make sure, when buying articles from Article *zines and *How-to’s – that you are the sole owner and rights holder of the article. (Also – If you have 2 or more sites – do not duplicate content between them.)
• Do not overdo SEO optimization. It’s pointless. Repeating “structural settlements” in article, because some BlackHat site in the internet claims it is top-10 paying keyword is pointless and you WILL get penalized. Spamming keywords in articles = penalty.
• Put only one AD unit above the fold. Even AdSense help pages revised the “hot” areas, where the user is probably going to look first. They are less now. Stick with their suggestion. They know better than you – where their money come from. If your ADs push the real content below the fold, you will never reach page 1 of SERP. Ever. (Yesterday a commenter in Darren Rowse’s blog said his visits tripled when he removed AdSense from his blog.)
• Avoid high paying keywords if you are not able to make really useful article for them.
• Avoid key words with gazillions monthly searches and stick with long tail key words (sentences) that have ~ 10k local searches per month with lower competition. It is the golden area. You can’t survive El dorado, because there are one million cowboys trying their luck. But if you are good – you can be a small town mayor.

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