Google has announced it will begin to diminish pages with excessive pop-ups. These changes will improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017.
Google’s explanation of interfering pop-ups is the one where leading content on a page cannot be read due to pop-ups covering up the full screen.
“Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible,” product manager Doantam Phan wrote in a blog post. “This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller.
The new guidelines on pop-up ads are specifically created for browsing on mobile devices. Ads on mobile devices have become a large downside due to smaller screens. On desktop computers, immense pop-up ads are a bit easier to dismiss or shut.
Google has made it clear that some forms of pop-up ads, such as for cookies notice and age verification, will not lose ranking because of this modification. Instead, they are aiming the categories of interstitials (pop-ups) that give a bad user experience.
Google reminds that this new signal is merely one in all the hundreds used to rank content. If Google determines that the main content of a page is very relevant to what a searching for, pages with intrusive interstitials should be served in search results.
