Google Page Layout Update

We had only one 336×280 ad unit aligned right and only one 160x90px adlink unit aligned left above the main content. There are few 125×125 buysellads banners in the sidebar. Ironically the same day Google Adsense sent an email that we should place upto 3 Adsense ad units to monetize more. High ad to content sites were earlier penalized by the Google Panda update and reducing ads was a suggested measure for Panda recovery.

What seemed to be the problem was the 2 navigation bars on top pushing content lower and there were ads placed high. So it seemed likely that there was low content to ad ratio above the fold. Now the site traffic is down badly by 50%.

Page Layout Changes

Some changes I quickly did to fix the site layout were as follows-

1. Navigation bars were removed from all pages (except the homepage), as this will help to push the content upwards and expose more content above the fold
2. The content area width was widened to allow more content to rise above the fold.
3. Breadcrumbs were made smaller and their high navigation was significantly narrowed
4. Reduced the size of the large rectangle from 336x280px to 300x250px and continued to retain it right aligned. That still retains the single Adsense unit.
5. Removed the 160px wide ad link unit, so that removes the sole ad link unit.
6. Pushed down the Buysellads in the sidebar, from the middle right position to a much lower position. This brings it below the fold mostly and now we need to reduce the ad pricing significantly. We also plan to reduce the number of 125×125 ads from max 4 to 2 in number soon.
7. Used the browser size tool to ensure there was only 1 ad visibile on majority of our pages for maximum users
8. We also removed the excellent related posts widget by Outbrain, the amazing Sharebar plugin, several other sidebar plugins and scripts to reduce confusion with ad scripts, which in turn made site faster and reduced page load time significantly
9. Removed repeated several links for popular posts etc, which might be interpreted wrongly as duplicate content.

Site Traffic Recovery?

Now as mentioned in the Google article, sites affected by page layout algo will be fixed when Googlebot recrawls affected sites, which should restore the search engine rankings, and it might take weeks. But reports are coming in that this was the Google Panda 3.2 update, which might suggest need to fix some other issues and may complicate traffic recovery.

The good part about the strong QOT community is that despite the search engine traffic drop, we will continue to publish great content and every new QOT article will continue to reach 25000 RSS readers, 8700 Facebook fans, 3900 Twitter fans and 1900 Google+ followers.

It has been a learning experience and indeed the site loads much faster, has much lesser ads, much cleaner design and definitely a better user experience… which Google aims for. Please see if any of these issues affect your site and fix them as soon as possible.

Any advice from the readers which might help site traffic recover is most welcome.

• New Google Panda Update Strikes Websites Traffic
• 10 Tips to Recover from Google Panda Update
• Google MayDay Algorithm May Crash Your Long Tail Traffic
• New Google Sitelinks Will Actually Increase Your Site Traffic
• Attract Big Site Traffic With This Little Used (FREE) Traffic Technique
• Is CSF-LFD Choking Your Site Traffic?

Page Layout Google Update

The earlier Google Panda update was said to significantly affect Google search engine rankings for websites with high ad to content ratio. This saw many webmasters reduce the  number of ads, remove low quality thin content and generate a high content-ad ratio. What this new Google update does is target sites where large ads dominate above the fold area, which has high visibility, needs no scrolling  and therefore has a high click rate for ads.

This leads to poor user experience, since users are hit with so many ads, and cannot find the content, which is pushed down by the ads. Current Google updates aim to reduce the ads above the fold so that users clicking through search results get exposed to … in Google’s own words “ lot of visible content above-the-fold “ and not just ads.

Since ads above the fold get higher CTR, webmasters do prefer to place ads there, and Google will not affect such sites. Only when the ads are excessive and the content is difficult to find, such sites will be affected.

Is Your Site Ad-Heavy

Google suggests you use Browser Size tool or many other tools to test your website in different screen resolutions and see how your site space is used and how ads dominate your site. I used the browser site tool and it looks like this

Interpretation – 90% contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger. If your site is center aligned, its a good idea to resize the browser window to test the tool or you will get a wrong result. One more thing to note is that these are client area sizes, not browser window sizes (so they are without the title bar, toolbars, status bars), which means the screen area visible will actually be smaller.

Test the tool with your site and you will realize that ads actually do occupy a large screen space which is all that is seen by a large percentage of people browsing with low screen resolutions

Is your site traffic down?

Its time to relook you ads placement and remove large ad blocks that over power your prime screen area. If your site traffic is indeed hit badly, do the site design changes and wait for Googlebot to recrawl and restore your traffic, which could take weeks… Google is watching … dont let your site get penalized.

• Top 50 Sites to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
• How To Attract Adsense Brand Advertisers by Ads Above the Fold
• 10 Sites to Buy Google Plus One +1 Votes
• Google Adsense Bug Showing No Ads on Sites
• Google’s 1000 Most Visited Sites List
• Attract Big Site Traffic With This Little Used (FREE) Traffic Technique

No  Adsense Ads

When I found the issue, I was surprised and at first it stuck me that its possible the ads were disabled. Then quickly checked my email for any Adsense warnings for policy violation etc., but there were none. I though it might be a browser issue, cleared the cache, then checked my site in other browsers – no ads. Then I checked the site in my Android mobile phone browser and still no ads.

Then I tried to see if the code was properly inserted, as sometimes you can break the code if you use WYSIWYG html editors. But the code was inserted properly. Then I went searching for possible causes for non displaying Adsense ads, and Adsense Help provides some answers like

1. JavaScript disabled in your browser
2. Personal firewall software with ad blocking / other ad blocking software
3. Disapproved site
4. Pages with potentially adult or mature content
5. Adsense policy violation
6. Account risk to advertisers or generating invalid clicks
7. Too many ad units on your site

But we always take care to strictly adhere to Adsense policies as it is an important advertising  revenue source for this site.  When I checked the Adsense account, the earnings were not zero, in fact Adsense Search was generating clicks and income. Indeed the Adsense ads were displaying on the site, and Adsense for Search was actually showing ads.

Then I posted to Twitter and checked the forums and realized many people are affected and a member roycerus says they have “verbal confirmation from Adsense directly” and this is an “Adsense bug which is being corrected [no eta for a fix yet] and many sites have been affected”.  Even the Adsense forum is full of such complaints and requests.

What is strange is that Google Adsense has not put up any blog post or update informing Adsense publishers of this Adsense bug as many webmasters and bloggers panic for fear as that their Adsense account may be disabled. It will also be interesting if Google Adsense team plans to reimburse publishers for the revenue loss, as some big publishers are losing thousands of dollars every hour!

Is you site affected? Do you see Adsense ads on your sites?

• 10 Sites to Buy Google Plus One +1 Votes
• Google’s 1000 Most Visited Sites List
• Google Penalizes Traffic to Above-the-Fold Ad Heavy Sites
• Google Adsense Sent Free Google +1 Stickers
• How to Get Google AdSense Premier Account
• Google Adsense Enlarges First Ad for More Clicks

Since version 1.0 in 2008, Android has made great use of hardware advances to the screen, camera, WiFi, magnetometer, accelerometer, GPS, gyro and much more. All in all, the OS has done a pretty fine job of creating an interface between man and machine. The problem is that there have been so many changes to the core operating system; so many improvements; so many enhancements, that most users don’t have a clue how powerful and useful the OS can be.

This guest post covers a few things that the average user might not know about Android. If you received a manual with your phone, now is the time to burn it while we explore the hidden side of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Take a Screenshot

The first on the list is the lowly screenshot feature. Incredibly for an OS at the cutting edge, and particularly an OS from the mighty Google, a screenshot feature was left out of every version of Android from 2.3 down. In order to take a screenshot of your screen, you were forced to root your device and install a dedicate App to perform the rather bog-standard screenshot feature.

Most Android 4.0 users will have figured it out by now, but if you haven’t then go ahead and hold down the Volume Down and Power Buttons to take that screenshot. The images should appear in your gallery.

Swipe to Call and Text

The next one is quite obvious, but some users will never have stumbled across it. It has been active for the last few versions of Android and will save you the odd second here and there, or a couple of key presses.

While viewing your text message threads or your contacts or your phone log or your contact favourites, simply swipe your finger left across the contact to send a text message to that contact. You can also swipe your finger right to call the contact. Nice and simple. Nice and effective.

Improve Facial Unlock

One new feature that Android 4.0 comes with is the Facial Unlocking Feature. Initially this feature did generate some negative feedback because Android didn’t always recognise your face accurately or quickly enough. To their credit, Google were quick to address these issues however. Providing you have updated your firmware (it only works in later releases of Android 4.0), then there is a way to ‘Improve’ the facial unlock feature.

Go to Settings – Security – Improve face matching. You might have to do this a few times to improve the speed and accuracy of recognition. It is also a good idea to position the phone at different angles to your head to improve the accuracy

Prevent Being Locked Out of Your Phone

Speaking of unlocking your phone: this tip is important if you use the pattern unlock feature, although it’s not strictly an Android 4.0 tip. Pattern unlocking can be very useful and is quicker than enter in a PIN number. The trouble begins if you forget your unlock pattern and you can’t get into your phone.

They say prevention is better than the cure and in this case, you need to sign up with a Google Gmail account (or any Google account for that matter) to apply the prevention. Chances are that most users will have one anyway, but it’s worth stating here. Then, if you do forget your unlock pattern, simply try any pattern 5 times. A button will then appear on the screen saying ‘forgot pattern?’. Press that and then enter your Google username/email and password and you’ll be back into your phone.

Disable Auto App Shortcuts on Homescreen

While Android has seen a stream of steady improvements, they don’t always know what’s best for us. One annoying feature is that when you download an App, the Android Market will put the shortcut to the App on your homescreen. This can get somewhat annoying, so here is the solution. First open the Market Application. Then go to Settings and uncheck the option for Auto-add Shortcuts.

Swipe to Close Apps

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as a new and intuitive way of closing Apps that are running. To find those currently running, press the multi-task button on your phone. You should then see a list of your currently running Apps. You will see x’s next to each App so that you can close it, but there is a more fun way.

Just throw the Apps off the screen by swiping your finger left or right. You’ll find the process can be quite gratifying as a matter of fact, and it frees up memory at the same time.

Use Power to Hang Up

Here’s a neat trick that is designed for Accessibility users, but should really be enabled by default. After a phone call you would generally look at your screen, then hunt and peck for the hang up button to ensure the call is ended (before you embarrass yourself by talking about the caller!).

A better way of hanging up is to go to Settings – Accessibility – Power button ends call. Then when you’ve finished your call, simply press the Power button to hang up.

Auto WiFi to Save Battery

The last useful Tip is for those with battery issues. Unfortunately these mini-computers that we carry in our pockets have a tendency to run out of juice quite quickly. Some of the biggest culprits include features such as Bluetooth, GPS and of WiFi.

Android 4.0 has a handy feature for turning off the latter when the phone is sleeping. To enable this power saving feature head over to Settings – WiFi – Advanced. Then select Keep WiFi on during sleep.

We hope you have found these tips useful. If you’re feeling adventurous, then feel free to have a poke around your OS and discover a few for yourself. You won’t break anything we can assure you.

This is a guest post by Bryan Hunter, the founder of Phone Tips and Tricks which provides the world’s largest database of tips and tricks for smartphones and tablets. Bryan is based in London, UK and regularly writes about the mobile phone industry. 

• 5 Essential Principles to Make Money Online
• 5 Google Search Tricks for SEO
• Why iPhone is Better Than Android and BlackBerry
• 6 Best Android Apps to Save Money
• Will Android 3.0 Tablets Beat the iPad?
• Preview Android 3.0 Honeycomb for Tablets [Video]

And the great news for Android smart-phone users is that, for a big fat wedge of this year’s outstanding apps, you don’t need to reach for your wallet. They’re free. So lets run down some of best apps to be had on Android – totally awesome and totally free.

Awesome Free Android Apps

1. Google Translate - No surprise that a Google app starts off the Android app list – especially an app that is amazing as Google Translate. Not only does this app translate written text to-and-from any number of languages, it can also speak the translated phrase for you.

It can even translate someone else’s spoken phrases, and turn them into something vaguely intelligible to you. Great for anyone traveling outside of their language comfort zone. And great as an ice-breaker when you’re in company in another country – the translations are not always perfect, but that adds to the potential for humorous unintended consequences.

2. Where’s my Droid? - Phones may be extra smart these days, but us humble users can be pretty dumb at times. And topping the list of not-so-clever human-phone interactions is the misplaced phone – which, naturally enough, you will have left on ‘silent’. But you can save yourself a lot of cushion-lifting frustration, trying to track down that errant phone, with this helpful little app.

Just send a text to your phone’s number, with the phrase ‘Where’s my droid’. Immediately the app triggers your phone into a noisy attention-grabbing response. Even better, with GPS enabled, the app can tell you where your phone is. Shame it can’t do the same fore car keys.

3. Sleep Talk Recorder - Love this one. There are some slices of our lives for which we have to rely on hearsay for – what we get up to whilst fast asleep being one of them. Now with this neat little app, Sleep Talk Recorder, you can find out whether you really do you snore; or, more importantly, whether you can actually talk Klingon in your sleep.

The app is simple to setup, and relies on clever noise-filtering technology to start recording only when you’re sleep-talking. You end up with a nicely-edited and revealing insight into your night’s utterings and splutterings. Great for sleep-talkers, but it may just be defeated by sleep-walkers..

4. Shazam - This is an app to end those endless bar-room debates, over who is playing what song on the radio. Shazam is another acoustically-tuned app, but this one picks up snatches of songs, rather than sleep-talk. It takes those acoustic slices, and compares them to the stored-signature sounds found online.

Once it’s zeroed-in on the song in question, Shazam tells you the artist, song title, and even shows the album art. Shazam works best on better known radio-edit plays, rather than obscurities – and keep the banter down; a faintly-heard song over a lot of bar-room chatter is likely to draw a blank.

5. Google Skymap - Another one from the boys’n'gals at Google, but this is a gorgeous crystallization of all the potential lurking in your Android smart-phone. Take one smart-phone, add Google Skymap, and then point at the night-time sky. Suddenly all of those anonymous points of light, usually swamped-out by street lamps and flashing plane-lights, spring to life.

This app shows you which of them are planets, which are stars, what their names are; it even connects the dots for all those fancy constellations. With this app, you really will never look at the night-sky in quite the same way again.

6. Pandora Radio for Android - Radio stations may be two-a-penny on smart-phones, but Pandora’s offering is a distinctive and accomplished blend of radio station and personal play-list – as well as being no-penny-at-all.

You simply throw Pandora the name of an group or singer that you like, and it builds a radio station play-list around that, and similar, artists. It also provide a pretty mash-up of album and group art, backgrounders on the artists and a rating system. This is 21^st century radio on-the-move, as it was meant to be.

7. Dropbox - With even the average Joe Sixpack juggling – in the course of one day – smart-phones, tablet PCs, laptop, and computers (at work and at home), keeping all of your info up-to-date is often a nightmare. Luckily, cloud-based apps like Dropbox have stepped in, to rescue us from a mish-mash of data confusion. Dropbox works so well because it seamlessly threads everything together.

Just drop those important files, pictures, contacts or music files into Dropbox, and they’re stored online and synchronized with all your other floating devices. You’ll never be lost for a file again.

8. Layar - In many ways, Layar is the app that, on Android phones, defines AR – augmented reality. AR takes the world around you and draws over it – on your smart-phone – with reams of useful information streamed down the internet. Layar includes, in its free version, such useful layers as special offers at restaurants, where the nearest ATM is, which houses are for sale – even who is twittering in your neighborhood.

There are now a huge number of customized layers that can be added to Layar, making your experience of reality potentially an ever-evolving one. Who’d have thought that reality would end up being super-sized like this?

9. Scoremobile - Finally, one for the sports fans. With this app tucked away on your Android smart-phone, you need never have to holler across the bar, for the TV sports channel to be turned up. Instead, you get all the latest results from your favorite sport – from NFL to NASCAR, baseball to golf – delivered straight to your handset.

Scoremobile let’s you set up a ‘stock-ticker’ style screen, which runs through the latest scores as they come in. Or you can tell the app to load up with scores from your selected sports/ teams at a certain scheduled time. There’s plenty of flexibility in this app, and you can even drill down into game and player stats. Obviously, for in-depth commentary or background you’ll need to turn elsewhere, but this free app is ideal for those who need their fix of sports news to hit hard, and fast.

This article is a guest post from Chee Seng, a blogger who writes about freeware reviews at BestFreeOnline.net

• 6 Best Android Apps to Save Money
• Google TV Ushers in Internet HDTV, Web TV, Android TV Apps
• Google App Inventor Creates Mobile Apps for Android Phones Easily
• Top 10 Free Web Apps To Replace Your Software
• Download Free Blackberry Apps Worth $100
• Download Xcode 4 Free: Create Apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad

Google Doodles Store

Google Doodles are the amazing Google Logos you find changing on Google sites everyday. Visit the Google Doodle Store on Zazzle and choose from a huge range of Google Doodles arranged by year and labeled by event the Google logo represented on that day.  You can also browse the new Google Doodle website and to find your favorite Google logo to put on your Tshirt or mug or any other branded merchandise.

Use the coupon code GOOGLEDOODLE at checkout and get 20% discount on most products. Offer ends on December 31, 2011.

See how Dennis Hwang creates the Google Doodles…

Recently Google created an Indian Independence day doodle, and now you can get any such Doodle on any product you like.  Which Doodle are you getting on your Tshirt?

• Great Belkin Sale: 50% Off All Products
• How to Design High Quality Logos in Ten Minutes Using Photoshop
• Buy WordPress Products at WordPress Swag Store
• Get Free Site Review by Google SEO Experts at Google I/O
• How to Show Google +1 Votes on Your Google Profile
• Google Adsense Sent Free Google +1 Stickers

Google Snow

See how the Google snow fall looks like.

Watch it in action in this video

If you click on Share link on top right, you can share on Google+

Do you like this Google Easter egg or did you like the earlier Google Barrel Roll? Anyway this reminds me its time to turn on snowfall on your blogs.

• Google Easter Egg: Do a Barrel Roll [Video]
• Add Snow Falling Effect to Your WordPress Blogs
• New Google Bar [Video]
• The Google+ Song [Video]
• New Google Social Search [Video]

Google Cloud Print button

Simply add the following code to your article pages on your website and allow users to easily print any page. Get the code for the Google Cloud Print element and its a simple cut and paste required. This code will put up a print button where you place the code. Clicking on the print button requires users to connect their printer to Google Cloud Print.

When users register their email for Google Cloud Print, it registers the available printers (including non cloud enabled printers too) and you can then start using this print facility. This is the popup you get when you click the print button after connecting.

See this video to learn more about Google Cloud Print.

• Auto-Submit All Your Blog Articles to Digg

Cadbury had earlier also made some 1kg  Dairy Milk+1 bars, with the tagline – the Cadbury bar that’s great for sharing.  They also ran a Google+ competition in UK and Ireland to give people a chance to win a unique 1kg Dairy Milk+1 chocolate bar.

Wouldn’t you love to grab a Cadbury Milk+1 Chocolate and get your name on this? Like this?

• 5 SEO Tips for Google Personalized Search
• Download iOS 4.0.1 for iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G to Fix Signal Strength Bars
• Get Free Site Review by Google SEO Experts at Google I/O
• Play PAC-MAN on Google.com: First Playable Google Doodle
• How to Show Google +1 Votes on Your Google Profile
• Google Adsense Sent Free Google +1 Stickers

Download Google Maps 6.0 for Android from Android Market. Then Android phone users can test indoor Google maps wherever the indoor floor plans are available. Businesses can join in and add floor plans to Google Maps by uploading pictures of their floor plans, blueprints, or directories of a floor.

Indoor Google maps

Browse around the airport floor plan to find your boarding gate, restrooms or coffee shop!

Take the video tour inside the IKEA store for shopping areas.

• Get Weather Forecast on Google Maps
• Google Street View Snowmobile Maps Mountains
• Google Maps Send-to-Car Navigation Service [Video]
• How to Get Your Videos Indexed by Google
• Buy Google Chromebooks [Videos]
• What is Google+ Project [Videos]