How Google might filter annoying pages

[Kenny]

How Google might filter annoying pages

Google recently filed a patent application with the title "Detecting and rejecting annoying documents". Here's the abstract of the application:

"A system and method for evaluating documents for approval or rejection and/or rating.

The method comprises comparing the document to one or more criteria determining whether the document contains an element that is substantially identical to one or more of a visual element, an audio element or a textual element that is determined to be displeasing."

The document describes how Google might analyze text and audio files. For example, Google might use optical character recognition tools and pattern matching against image and sound databases.

Why did Google do this?

Google probably wants to make their ad reviewing process faster. Their AdWords system accepts images ads, video ads and text ads.

Google has ad design guidelines and Google has to review all of these ads before they can be displayed in the AdWords network.

Manually reviewing these ads would take a lot of time. Given the high number of ads that Google displays, it might be impossible to review them all.

What are they looking for? Does this affect normal website rankings?

Google wants to avoid that ads are annoying or offensive. For example, they check if an ad is flashing, has repetitive movement or infinite loops. The use of streaming video and audio is also checked as well as the quality of the images.

Google also checks the content of the ads (offensive language, adult content) and many associated factors.

While it seems that these methods are currently used for ads the same criteria can also apply to normal web pages. If an ad annoys its viewers then it's likely that a web page with the same elements will annoy its visitors. For that reason, Google might also use these quality checks for the normal search results.

What does this mean to your website?

If your website contains many flashy elements, you might want to redesign it. Professional website design might be an important factor for high search engine rankings in the near future.

While professional design is important, it is also important that search engines can parse the content of your web pages.

Cy

 

[whitebark]

But what if I like web pages from the 80's with all those flashing gif's and annoying sound loops? Guess I'll have to use MSN or Yahoo...

And by reading the article it sounds as though 90% of any facebook, myspace, friendster etc profile qualifies as annoying.

 

[bl8nket]

I think my friend knows, maybe i'll tell him 2 post here...

 

[deep_3657]

Sounds in web pages always seems annoying to me. A bit of movements in pages only makes it attractive, rather than annoying

 

[Kenny]

But what if I like web pages from the 80's with all those flashing gif's and annoying sound loops? Guess I'll have to use MSN or Yahoo...

And by reading the article it sounds as though 90% of any facebook, myspace, friendster etc profile qualifies as annoying.

:bingo: :D

 

[Posterboy]

I think whether a webpage is 'annoying' or not is quite subjective. I don't know how an algorithm can be used to filter out so-called 'annoying' webpages.

 

[Kenny]

I think whether a webpage is 'annoying' or not is quite subjective. I don't know how an algorithm can be used to filter out so-called 'annoying' webpages.

Well it appears annoying will now be defined by G!, and that they do in fact have such an algo.

Google, the "Big Brother" of the internet.

Cy

 

[shockie]

whether a page is annoying or not is a subjective matter, but i think that there's enough of a consensus on many different website design elements to get an algorithm going. i doubt that your site will be banned from the search engine simply because you have auto-playing sound or a really large title (for example), but you should try to avoid many of the obvious elements of your site that do not help, and in fact annoy, your visitors.

Search Engine Panel is a good website / blog with tips on balancing search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and retaining visitorship and lowering bounce rates.

 

[DylanButler]

This is good news if I understand correctly as it only affects advertisers.

Lately I have seen an astounding amount of 'Click this only if you are over 18' and other ridiculous ads being served by Google