Saw this Lego product today while browsing Lego toys, and it got me musing over the ever increasing move toward ready made pieces and away from the old school bricks I loved when I was growing up. Admittedly, even the Lego I loved had horses and certain Space Lego pieces that weren’t strictly old school… but where should the line be drawn to encourage creativity in the use of Lego and not just prescribed scenarios? 

Over the weekend I gave the Stop SOPA Ireland campaign a small bit of help, putting together some banners and timeline covers… I can’t take a huge amount of credit for the work since Sabrina Dent had the design direction set by the site and the source files ready to go – but I think they look well and it felt good to lend a hand to the cause :)

If you’re not up to speed on what Stop SOPA Ireland is, check out the Stop SOPA Ireland website, read the briefing document or watch the short exchange in the Dáil below.

If you’d like to get a FaceBook timeline cover to spread the word you can grab them here.

What are the implications of Google’s “page layout algorithm” and could it herald a whole new way in which Google intends to dictate how websites should be designed, developed and function?

Google already impacts many aspects of a website’s existence, including technical implementation, site structure and copy as webmasters strive to deliver a site Google interprets as valuable to searchers. Getting your site structured in a way that makes sense to Google, getting it to load quickly enough, writing content that understandable to Google while being valuable to users and keeping an eye on your social profile all mean that the shape of the web today is impacted significantly by the search engine.

When Google make changes to their algorithm it can have a massive effect on a site’s rankings which in turn can have a huge cost implication, and at times Google’s changes can be contradictory to previous best practice thus punishing sites that were carefully operating in accordance with Google’s recommendations.

Google announced their ‘page layout algorithm’ last week,and stated on their blogs:

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result. [..] So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change.

In actual fact, the post centers around the issue of sites that place a huge amount of ads before any content, but that’s not specifically alluded to in the quote above.

The impact Google has on site structure and copy mostly arise from technical issues: how an automated process can spider and interpret a website. Other SEO ranking factors such as click through rate, bounce rate and site speed are factors we consider measurable and important even outside of Google. Social factors, while it may be an inconvenience that Google forces our hand (particularly when it comes to Google plus) social is still an aspect of the web you should ignore at your peril.

With the page layout algorithm, Google are saying they’ve

heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content they aren’t happy with the experience

I have yet to come across any indication as to where these complaints originated or how they were collected. So really, this isn’t a technical issue, or a metric we can accurately measure, it’s a subjective decision Google have made based on anecdotal reports from users.

I understand that this update will most likely clean up the search results pages and demote some spammy sites, sites that are creating pages of content to attract clicks and then piling advertising at the top of the page to attract clicks and make money.

Isn’t there an argument to be made though that if the ads are placed there because they perform well it indicates that the user found the ad useful, can’t we at least say that there may be cases where needing to scroll to get to the original content might be valid? If someone maintains a site full of excellent content on products and then places ads for those products before the content, are Google really in a position to say “stop doing that” – particularly when Google in effect do the same thing; deliver natural search results preceded by paid ads.

In answer to that question, Google explain that the algorithm will effect site’s where it’s a sitewide issue, as opposed to Google search where there are more search results pages without ads than with ads. Not the most convincing justification I’ve ever heard.

Ultimately Google are saying that they may now penalise sites that are laid out in a way that they feel effects user experience. That might be true for a lot of sites that will be affected, they might be spammy ad filled nightmares none of us want to land on. But tomorrow, we might wake up to a blog post from Google saying

we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s a green site they aren’t happy with the experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

Is this page layout algorithm a slippery slope? The thin edge of the wedge? A camel’s nose?

For a really good roundup post on the page layout algorithm check out Aaron Wall’s SEObook post.

“Zakas essentially “paints” with Unicode, combining its non-character entities to break layout engines — creating what might just be society’s most obscure and recent art form.“