Mueller Discusses How Google Ranks Websites That Have Too Many Ads

When developing a website, a website SEO audit is crucial to know which aspects need improvement. For instance, if an SEO audit finds that there are too many ads on a website, webmasters must instantly fix the problem as it could lead to poor user experience, and therefore worse rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). However, not all sites with an excessive number of ads seem to suffer from poor rankings, which has puzzled some SEO experts.

In a Google Search Central live stream on 11 December, SEOs asked Google’s John Mueller why some websites overloaded with ads still manage to rank on the SERPs despite their poor user experience. The SEO also asked how exactly Google deals with such websites.

Mueller responded, explaining that there are a lot of factors that could affect the rankings of a website with many ads. Although there are times when Google removes these websites from the results page, Mueller said that these cases are very rare, and there are a set of specific conditions that need to be met. He also explained why Google keeps such websites in its index even though they are obviously violating webmaster guidelines.

According to Mueller, there are several algorithm systems that affect the rankings of websites with poor user experience: Page Layout Algorithm, Page Speed Algorithm, and Core Web Vitals.

The Page Layout Algorithm, launched in 2012, is meant for websites that have too many ads. The second algorithm, the Page Speed Algorithm, affects websites that may be sluggish to load as a result of excessive ads. Lastly, the Core Web Vitals, which is one of the soon-to-be-launched algorithms, targets websites with suboptimal user experience.

Mueller said that there are various things one should consider when it comes to optimising user experience, and the three algorithms mentioned will help SEOs and webmasters measure their progress more accurately.

As for webpages with too many ads, Mueller said that they can still rank, especially when their content is extremely relevant and useful for specific queries. He explained that websites with poor user experience are not totally excluded from Google’s index. For instance, if a website has subpar user experience, searchers can still find the website if they type in its exact name on the search bar.

There is also a wide range of queries that can make a website with bad user experience appear on the results page. For instance, if a webpage has bad user experience but has relevant content, Google will still show it on the SERPs because the people are looking for the content and don’t necessarily care about the user experience.

Websites could potentially get removed from the SERPs due to bad user experience, but this happens rarely, and only in conjunction with other problems. Google manually removes websites that do not offer anything helpful or unique, or are totally irrelevant to search queries. Such websites will simply never show up for any query the searcher types in.

However, it’s worth noting that this is only done for cases where the entire site is irrelevant. Mueller shared that Google has its own web spam team who can take a look at such websites and determine if it is a pure spam website. In these instances, Google will remove the website from the index completely.

Because there are so many factors involved in determining a website’s rankings, having a thorough SEO audit for business websites is a must. The results of an SEO audit helps a company determine what they should do to improve their website and avoid the common pitfalls that typically lead to poor search engine rankings.

Having a professional conduct a website SEO audit for your business will allow you to see if your website offers good or bad user experience for your online customers. Here at Position1SEO, we will provide you with a free, in-depth SEO audit before we proceed with the real SEO tasks. Call us on 0141 404 7515 or send us a message at office@position1seo.co.uk to work with us today!