Yesterday, Google announced a change to its search algorithm that will begin ranking websites based on how many advertisements the site has before content begins appearing. "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," the web giant said. 

Websites that have an excessive amount of ads "above-the-fold," the initial section of the site that you see, will be ranked below sites that have more content easily visible to readers. This change won't affect sites that have one or two ads, which is common, Google says. 

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. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly. You can use our Browser Size tool, amongmany others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.