Running Google Ads on the website will impact the Rankings?

[RuchiPardal]

Hi,

Will Google AdSense those are running above the fold of the website, impact the keywords rankings?

[TomRayner]

Hi Ruchi

It can do, if it is overdone.  The question is of course, how much is too much?

Here is an excerpt from a great post on the topic from Danny Sullivan:

"How can you tell if you’ve got too many ads above-the-fold? When I talked with the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, he said that Google wasn’t going to provide any type of official tools similar to how it provides tools to tell if your site is too slow (site speed is another ranking signal).

Instead, Cutts told me that Google is encouraging people to make use of its Google Browser Size tool or similar tools to understand how much of a page’s content (as opposed to ads) is visible at first glance to visitors under various screen resolutions.

But how far down the page is too far? That’s left to the publisher to decide for themselves. However, the blog post stresses the change should only hit pages with an abnormally large number of ads above-the-fold, compared to the web as a whole:

We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content.
This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.

This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads."

Hope this helps.

[Modi]

Hi to be precisely in yes or no, my personal observation basis adsense experience is

If you put 1 ad - 728x90 or 468x60 above the fold - it does not make any kind of algorithmic change, This is what we have observed in our own site getting descent traffic of over 1 lac visitors/month

However, more than 1 ad units can actually harm user experience on site as he will only see ads above the fold. For more this is part of Google Webmaster blog. Have highlighted the main aspect

"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.

As we’ve mentioned previously, we’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. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

_We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads. _

This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. "

[AlanMosley]

As tom said it can, how much is too much?

But I would also be worried about turning off users and making your site look spammy.

[EGOL]

I run leaderboard ads above the design, a skyscraper at top left and a rectangle below the first photo in the right column.  All of these are visible above the fold.   My rankings are great in lots of very difficult SERPs.

The important thing is.... These ads to not compete with my content.  My content is clearly visible and perfectly obvious to everyone and anyone who lands on the page.

Also, the ads are not the dumb, irritating, provocative, suggestive stuff that would put off lots of people.

Bottom line... its not HOW MANY.     Instead... it is WHERE and WHAT.