In January this year Google made a significant change to the way their search algorithm works.   The change will affect websites where visitors have to scroll (or page down) to find the content they've searched for.  In other words, for your website to rank well, Google says your primary content needs to be 'above the fold'.

Google make hundreds of changes to their algorithm every year but only some of these directly affect the way normal websites are ranked.  This change will be one that has an impact on the way websites are designed and managed; all businesses need to consider this impact.

Google's motivation for this change is to improve the ease with which web users can access content on web pages.  Web users are more time poor than ever and want the content they've searched for straight away.  Web users don't want to waste time trying to find the content they want - if web users can't see the content they want straight away, it is considered a poor user experience.  

To help facilitate the user experience and the speed to which Google users can access information, Google will now penalize websites that do not display a reasonable amount of visible content immediately and will not rank as well in the Google search index going forward.

If you believe your website ranking may be affected by this change, please contact us to discuss.