The Panda update continues to hit waves, this time from an unexpected location or should i say more accurately, ads location…. Looks like, a new factor has been implemented into Panda- Google will now penalize sites with overwhelming amount of ads, or sites with ads in annoying positions.

Google’s head of spam team, Matt Cutts, has announced it at the PubCon conference: “If you (webmasters) have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it…” Suggesting that too many ads can hurt the user experience and therefore it may result some “ads penalty” from Google.

Another Piece Of The Panda Puzzle?

I am still seeing in lots of SEO forums and blogs many posts trying to speculate and figure out the Panda algorithm update, as there are few open questions that remained unsolved for many webmasters. I especially saw a big increase in posts and threads from frustrated webmasters after the periodically algorithm update on October 14th (Also known as Panda 2.5.2).

Apparently, webmasters have been hit by one of the Panda updates and no matter what actions they took, they didn’t manage to get back on track (recover in rankings). I tried to solve this also, as i saw many good sites ranked below very bad sites. After didn’t came to any conclusion i even wrote a post suggesting that Google search algorithm gone crazy…

Now, the new statement from Mr. Cutts may solve some of the open issues of these Panda wounded webmasters. Their rankings penalty may have been the result of too many ads or ads in bothering location, that in general interrupt to the surfing experience on their pages.

How To Defend Yourself Against “Ads Penalty”?

First of all, don’t panic and remove all ads from your sites. Just try to ask yourself the following questions as a regular visitor to your website:

• Are there too many ads on the page?
• Can you tell what is the “real” content and what are the advertisements?
• Are their any ads that interfere with your surfing experience on the page?

OK, i hope you get the point. Anyway, i was reading many posts online blaming Google for only thinking on the bottom line (the money) by launching the Panda update. In fact, it seems that this last move will only damage Google’s bottom line and that the company genuinely thought on the users benefit…