Semalt Tells Why Too Many Ads Can Hurt Your Google Ranking


Table Of Contents

  1. Is Google Against Ads?
  2. Too Many Ads Can Hurt Google Rankings. How?
  3. Which Ads Affect Google Ranking?
  4. Which Ad-Related Practices Affect Google Rankings?
  5. What Are Some Best Practices To Place Ads?
  6. Conclusion
If you have a website, why not use it to earn more and more money. It's what most website owners (both individuals and businesses) think and thus fill it with ads.

Incorporating ads on websites to earn money is a common practice all over the world. But it works only when your website has valuable content and a limited number of ads placed strategically.

Placing too many ads has many disadvantages, such as it hurts your Google rankings. And in today's time, when everybody is trying to rank higher on Google, who would like to risk their Google ranking?

If you are not ranking higher on Google SERPs, it might be because of the number of ads on your site. Do you want to understand the relation between ads and Google ranking?

Well, valuable insights from Semalt experts available in this article can help you understand several things about ads and Google rankings. Make sure you read it till the end and gain the best knowledge.

Is Google Against Ads?

Ads are not the biggest concern of Google, but User Experience is. For a long time, Google is emphasizing a lot on enhancing the user experience. Google is more interested in knowing whether a website serves the purpose or not.

Does a site have content according to its users? Does a site load too slow? And all other things that affect user experience.

Focus on the number of ads and their placement is a part of Google's efforts to enhance the users' experience on a website. In the past, Google received many complaints from people that they don't see the content, but ads, by clicking on a search result. 

They have to scroll down the page and pass a few ads to see the actual content. That's one of the reasons why Google started penalizing sites that don't place any content above the fold.

All this doesn't mean that Google is against ads or hates them. It means Google wants website owners to come up with ad placement strategies that enhance user experience. 

This way, websites prioritizing user experience instead of ads are rewarded by Google with higher rankings.

Too Many Ads Can Hurt Google Rankings. How?

Some of the reasons why too many ads on your website can hurt Google rankings are:

• Too Many Ads Decrease The Load Speed

After getting permission to display ads, website owners usually get tempted and place more ads on their site. Doing so may help them earn more money in the beginning, but things reverse after some time.

In recent years, site speed (or site load speed) has become a crucial ranking factor and is becoming even more significant with every new update. More number of ads leads to:
  • Excessive scripting
  • Increase in the number of resource calls
  • More download of uncompressed images
All these decrease the load speed, and you know users don't like slow-loading websites. Most of them don't return, which means a decline in traffic and eventually profit. 

When Google realizes that your website is providing a bad user experience, it punishes your site by declining its position in search results.

• Too Many Ads Overload Crawl Budget

Too many ads not only increase the size of a website but also overloads its crawl budget. Google has a separate crawl budget for every website, which means Google will allocate limited resources to crawl a website for indexing.

Often, the crawl budget of websites is abundant, but more advertisements eat that budget quickly. Excessive advertisements increase the number of resource calls and thus affect the crawling of your website.

If your website has numerous indexed pages, you must worry about the crawl budget and avoid placing too many ads on it. However, if the size of your website is small and it attracts high traffic, you can keep your worries aside.

• Too Many Ads Make Your Website Top Heavy

In 2012, the "Top Heavy" algorithm from Google was announced to prevent sites with too many ads from ranking higher in search results. Top-heavy websites are those having more ads than the actual content.

The recent changes made to the AdSense rules also reveal that web pages having more advertisements than the intended content will be viewed negatively by Google.

In other words, web pages having more ads compared to content are going to lose their value. Google won't consider them significant and downgrade their appearance in search results.

If your website has more ads than content, revamp the layout and make sure that content dominates the webpage, not ads. If you succeed in creating the right balance, Google won't penalize your site.

• Too Many Ads Frustrate Users

The fact is that users don't like all kinds of ads. The percentage of users disliking video ads that play automatically and pop-ups is on the rise.

Auto-disappearing auto-play ads with sound and pop-up ads with countdowns also drive users away. Such ads frustrate many users so much that they avoid revisiting websites with these ads.

Most people hate to watch auto-play ads and searching for the X button to turn them off. Hosting ads that frustrate users is another way of providing a bad user experience. Google always notices such websites and doesn't waste time punishing them.   

Experts suggest that if your site has any of these, remove them immediately. If you keep such ads on your website, don't expect your visitors to return and get ready to rank lower in search results.

Which Ads Affect Google Ranking?

Sometimes knowingly and sometimes because of ignorance, website owners place too many ads on their site. This practice leads to issues that, eventually, affect Google rankings. Here are some ads often responsible for lower Google rankings:

• Above The Fold

These ads appear first instead of the primary content. Users have to scroll down to view the actual content of the web page.


USource: searchengineland.com

• Forced Pop-Ups

They usually float above the content when you scroll down the page. The most annoying thing is not finding an easy way to close them.


• Interstitials

These are ads that redirect users away from the primary content, and the worst thing is that they don't offer a path to return.


• Auto-Play Audio And Video

They are most annoying because an audio or video file starts playing automatically as soon as the webpage loads.


Which Ad-related Practices Affect Google Rankings?

In the case of types of ads affecting Google rankings, unawareness can be an excuse. But when it comes to commencing ad-related activities that affect rankings, there's no room for explanations because most website owners do them knowingly.

Let's learn about some ad-related practices that affect Google rankings:
  • Forced Ad Placement
In this scenario, you place ads on a webpage only to make money instead of providing your visitors any value.
  • Misleading Ad Styling
You might have come across some ads that look promising, but once clicked, they provide nothing of value. These are deceiving ads and are styled in a way to mislead users.
  • Additional Pagination To Increase Clicks On Ads
It is also quite common where a website has content but divided into several parts, and each portion is on a separate page with ads displayed in between. To access the full article / content, you must click amidst each page.

Now ask yourself - Would you be happy to visit a website having annoying ad-related issues? Not much.

If you have ads on your website, remember annoying ads and ads-related malpractices can irritate your users the same way they make you unhappy. If you want people to visit your site again and again, make sure your website is free from ad-related issues as well.

What Are Some Best Practices To Place Ads?

Some of the best practices to place ads on a website are:

• Focus On Ad Placement

The real reason websites get traffic is content, not advertisements. It means you need to make sure that ads on your website don't mess with the actual content. If such a thing happens, your site's bounce rate will increase.

• Avoid Misleading Ad Styling

You may style ads to be in line with your website's design, but it might mislead visitors to click on them. Make sure your visitors can identify advertisements on your site straightforwardly. If not, their dissatisfaction gets counted as a bad user experience.

• Prioritize Above And Left-Side Ads

You have just now learned that above-the-fold ads are bad for SEO. But, if they are not pushing the primary content down or not distracting users from the actual content, you can go with them. Studies also reveal that ads on the top get the most attention. They are followed by ads on the left side and then the right side.

• Incorporate Fewer Ads

You may think that incorporating more ads will help you earn more revenue. But they'll make your page look cluttered and deteriorate the user experience. If you find it tough to identify the number of ads your website should have, you can always take professional help.

Conclusion

Ads, no doubt, can help you earn a lot of money. Many websites are doing so and inspiring numerous website owners to incorporate ads on their sites.

If you also have a website with ads, make sure ads don't interfere with the content. Your aim should be to satisfy your visitors. 

It's possible when you drop the idea of incorporating too many ads on your website and focus on enhancing the user experience. Always remember that people visit your website for content, not to view ads.

Interested in SEO? Check out our other articles on the Semalt blog.