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If you, like many others, are aggravated when you visit a website and are greeted with a pop-up window, Google’s latest announcement is sure to make you smile.
Google will be penalizing those mobile sites that have intrusive full-page ads and interstitial ads, by making them appear lower in search engine results.
The official announcement stated:
“Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller. To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”
This is being done as a part of Google’s continuing quest for making each person’s Web experience as useful and easy as possible. However, it should be noted that not all sites will be affected. So far, Google has listed four types of interstitials that will be targeted. These are:
- Pop-ups that cover the main content after the user arrives at the page as a result of Web search
- Stand-alone pop-ups that must be dismissed before accessing content
- The use of a layout where the pop-up mimics the above-the-fold content but the original content has been pushed underneath the fold
- Overlays that gray out the area beneath them to prevent you from reading a website, either for a few seconds or until you locate the small “X” and then carefully tap the screen so the pop-up will go away
Site pop-ups such as the following are not at risk of being penalized:
- Those that manage legal obligations such as cookie usage or age verification
- Login dialog for pages not indexed
- Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easy to dismiss (No size has been given yet for what is deemed acceptable or not.)
This is not a new approach for Google, as last September Google announced they would be downgrading sites in rankings that show full-page ads asking site guests to install mobile apps.
Now is the time to review your website and make sure it meets this new criteria set forth by Google. As local, Raleigh-based web developers and designers, the Page Progressive team understands how important it is that your website performs as you need it to. We help clients create websites that are effective and ranked well on search engines. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you!