Back in August, Baidu announced a new algorithm update called “Ice Bucket”. This update was aimed at targeting mobile sites with poor user experience caused by annoyances such as splash pages asking users to download their app, popup ads that stretch over the main content, or requiring users to log in before accessing content.

These types of popup ads are quite common in China, and Baidu is taking a stand against these practices.However, in the past few months, Baidu feels that while it has made significant progress, it’s time to step things up again. It announced an update in early December, which it is calling “Ice Bucket 2.0″.

The change is aimed at dealing with these types of sites even more severely, and it gives a warning to webmasters to make some changes to their sites which might be in violation of such guidelines.Below is a translation of the official post from Baidu Webmaster Central:

‘ A while ago, we shared some details about Baidu’s mobile search “Ice Bucket Algorithm”. In the time since this update was launched, we noticed that the vast majority of websites have already responded, and have severely limited user downloads and full-screen popups.

However, we noticed there are still a large number of sites that still have serious issues affecting user experience. Primarily, we’re referring to full screen downloads, large ads that block the majority of the main content on mobile phones with small screens, or forcing the user to sign up before they can use the site.

In light of this, we will be releasing the “Ice bucket algorithm 2.0″ to increase the level of severity with which we deal with such issues. Reminder: Ice Bucket 2.0 will be launched in about two weeks, and we hope that most webmasters will resolve these issues in time. ‘

Source:http://zhanzhang.baidu.com/wiki/341 (Chinese)