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.
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August 8th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Too many people see Google as a search company. Google is not a search company it is an advertising company! Everything they do is geared towards advertising.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
See, I read something where Google was going to try to eliminate the made for Adsense websites, but after thinking about it, why would they? They make money off these sites.
I would love to see Google get rid of dead and annoying sites, but I doubt it will happen.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Google will try to stop annoying sites, but I don’t think they’ll be able to keep them out faster then people are building them.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I think the same way David, but if they can create an intelligent bot or something that will block all of these.. than it is possible..
August 9th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Ok, my sites i try to keep from being annoying, and i hope that my sites don’t fall under the “annoying umbrella” but isn’t this being a bit elitest by Google. I mean maybe the day has past, but i remember when some of the best and most useful sites sucked visually.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:01 am
I would think this just has to do with measuring the time that someone stays on a page. That’s the really big metric that people are looking at these days … especially since video has gotten so big with YouTube.
Less time = more annoying
August 9th, 2007 at 6:39 am
I don’t think Google should try and ‘control the web’. People might add a flash video to their site or an image or banner maybe because they like it or they made it up for fun. Google cannot dictate website owners what they can and cannot display on their websites.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Glad I keep my site to a minimum. There’s a few splotches of graphics and the rest is text.
CSS Beauty for the win!
August 9th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Agree Sean, using lot of CSS is a good options
August 9th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Interesting theory; it will be good to see how all this really pans out
August 9th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Google is turning into that absentminded giant of the Internet. It’s not that they are trying to hurt others on purpose as much as they just don’t seem to notice their actions are hurting us.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Their actions may be hurting us, but it’s pushing us to make more useful content.
It helps them, and in the end, the end user finds something useful.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
That is true, all actions are for creating better quality and better organized sites
August 10th, 2007 at 1:18 am
google try to protect user from dangerous sites but it punishing some another site. in fact prbolem is the how can find rigt informatin.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
[…] Nomar - How Google Might Filter Annoying Pages King Nomar writes about a recent patent filing by Google which could filter offensive ads through […]
August 10th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I think Google would have been able to put StumbleUpon’s information to good use, had they purchased it instead of eBay. They would be able to consider likes/dislikes for rankings, as opposed to using links as that metric.
DevDad
August 10th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Sean,
I completely agree. The reality is, from Google’s perspective, quality information’s value far outweighs good design’s value.
DevDad
August 11th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
“Too many people see Google as a search company. Google is not a search company it is an advertising company! Everything they do is geared towards advertising.”
Well since everything they provide is ‘free’ they have to pay for it somehow. They do that threw ads. Because they are so large they opened their ad system to everyone (ad-words -> adsense) thus making them one of the largest ad networks. Then they bought double-click. How they are pretty much the largest and best company.
“Google is turning into that absentminded giant of the Internet. It’s not that they are trying to hurt others on purpose as much as they just don’t seem to notice their actions are hurting us.”
1. Google is not absentminded. Everything they do is very well planned.
2. How are they hurting us?
August 11th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I agree with the last post. I blog in the hopes of making a living someday. I’m certainly not so altruistic that I would do it for nothing. Why should Google. And popularity and use is what runs a capitalistic country. We can ‘vote’ not to use Google-go ahead and cast your vote. Quit using it. (Though I’ve been following a post that hides from Google on purpose-very interesting)
I also hate those slide in ads-I hope Google or SunMicrosystems finds a way to block them, too.
August 14th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
While they may help eliminate some sites it’ll never be able to eliminate all. Algorithms will never be perfect and a bunch of sites would slip through this.
August 25th, 2007 at 2:48 am
google is allways inventing ways to grow their pockets! we, publishers, are lambs for the slaught!
August 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Agreed Jonix they are just loving the $$$
January 10th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I would love to see Google get rid of dead and annoying sites