Clutter Cutter

In a quest to be all things to all people it's easy to get caught up in trying to fill your front page with everything imaginable. Does too much stuff make your page undesirable to visitors? To search engines? Yahoo has applied for a patent that includes a new application that will rank pages according to their "clutter" factor. This is an excerpt from the patent application:

"It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called 'clutter.'"

According to Yahoo, here is a list of 51 ways pages are considered "cluttered" and are, therefore, may not ranked as high as we would like.

• Total number of links
• Total number of words
• Total number of images (non-ad images)
• Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
• Dimensions of page
• Page area (total)
• Page length
• Total number of tables
• Maximum table columns (per table)
• Maximum table rows (per table)
• Total rows
• Total columns
• Total cells
• Average cell padding (per table)
• Average cell spacing (per table)
• Dimensions of fold
• Fold area
• Location of center of fold relative to center of page
• Total number of font sizes used for links
• Total number of font sizes used for headings
• Total number of font sizes used for body text
• Total number of font sizes
• Presence of “tiny” text
• Total number of colors (excluding ads)
• Alignment of page elements
• Average page luminosity
• Fixed vs. relative page width
• Page weight (proxy for load time)
• Total number of ads
• Total ad area
• Area of individual ads
• Area of largest ad above the fold
• Largest ad area
• Total area of ads above the fold
• Page space allocated to ads
• Total number of external ads above the fold
• Total number of external ads below the fold
• Total number of external ads
• Total number of internal ads above the fold
• Total number of internal ads below the fold
• Total number of internal ads
• Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
• Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
• Total number of sponsored link ads
• Number of image ads above the fold
• Number of image ads below the fold
• Total number of image ads
• Number of text ads above the fold
• Number of text ads below the fold
• Total number of text ads
• Position of ads on page

There is also reason to believe that flash and animation adds to the "clutter score." It should go without saying, pages that are easy to use will convert more visitors to customers so in that aspect Yahoo may be right on target. Not to be outdone, Google has a similar patent application regarding "annoying documents."

So, if satisfying the delicate balance of key phrase density (among other things) isn't enough, it is now becoming more important than ever to look at the level of usability from the visitor standpoint.