In an SEO Office Hours Hangout, Google’s John Mueller said, without scrollingMueller explained how much content Google expects to appear at the top of the page.
what”above the fold“Average?
“without scrolling‘ is a reference to content seen above the fold when the web page is loaded in a browser.
The etymology comes from the fact that newspapers were displayed in the vending machine of the news box.
You will see the top of the newspaper that was above where the newspaper was folded (above the fold).
Illustration of etymology”above the fold“
Above-the-fold today means content at the top of the page that is visible without scrolling down.
Diagram of web content for “Above the Fold”
Questions about above-the-fold content and ranking benefits
Some people relate to John Mueller that his competitors moved content and links from above-the-fold to above-the-fold.
They then observed that their rankings improved “significantly” after updating their website that way.
The question is whether Google prefers above-the-fold content or above-the-fold content.
John Mueller on content Google expects above-the-fold content
Screenshot of John Mueller advising how much content Google prefers to be visible above the foldAbove-the-Scroll Content and Google Rankings
It’s a perfectly valid question to ask if rankings benefit from seeing more content without scrolling. The more above-the-fold content, the better the user experience.
Additionally, in the old days, Google prioritized content near the top of web pages. There have been many patents and research papers and statements confirming that keywords and headlines at the top of the page are considered more algorithmically important than content at the bottom of the page.
Most well-written articles state the topic in the first paragraph, and most product pages announce the product or page content at the top of the page. So it made sense to give a little more weight to the content closer to the top of the page.
But that was before Google started using AI and natural language processing to understand your content. Currently, Google ranks pages for content near the top, middle, and bottom of his webpage. This is because Google doesn’t have to guess as much as it used to, and can understand your content better.
Will Google prioritize top page content?
Google’s Mueller responded to whether Google has a preference:
“I don’t think we have a strong preference in that regard.”
Mueller followed up that statement by explaining what Google wants to see above the fold.
He said:
“So the point is, you want to see content that can be seen without scrolling.
So… when the user visits the page, the part of the page must be displayed.
For example, if a user comes to your website, just sees a big holiday picture, and has to scroll down a bit to actually get the content about the hotel, that becomes a problem for us. increase.
But if they go to your homepage and see your Hall of Fame photo at the top and a little bit of information about your hotel, such as your hotel site, that’s fine.
So it’s not just that the content has to be above-the-fold. But… some of the content has to be.
Google and Content Positioning
This is an interesting question because it helps show how far Google has come in terms of ranking algorithms. After updating Google Hummingbird, Google started to stop using keywords in titles, headings and near the top of the page. This is for guessing which words are important to guess what the content is.
Now Google can use natural language processing to understand what the topic of the page is and how it relates to the search query, even if the search query doesn’t contain the keyword. became.
So to understand the answer to your question, you need to understand the difference between the old algorithm that prioritized words at the top of the page and why Google stopped doing that (AI and natural language processing).
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Watch John Mueller answer questions about Google’s above-the-fold content settings. About 55:13 minutes.
