Google announced that it will begin punishing mobile pages that show hard-to-dismiss pop-up ads when a user first opens a page. The change will be effective starting on January 10, 2017 and will cause the page to rank lower in Google’s search results.
Additionally, Google is removing the “mobile-friendly” label that highlights mobile pages that are easy to read based on search results. According to Google’s data, 85 percent of all pages it shows on the search results pages are now mobile-friendly. In an effort to declutter the results pages, it’s removing the label.
The punishment for the annoying ads and announcements that take over the whole page and have a tiny, almost invisible button to dismiss them, will likely not take well to marketers, but for users, can’t come soon enough.
But Google won’t punish all sites that use interstitials – just the ones that make content less accessible. This refers to pop-ups that cover the main content after users navigate to a page or as they are looking through it. This also includes standalone interstitials that have to be dismissed before you can access the main content, as well as pages that show what looks like a standalone interstitial above the fold.
The ads that sites use for login dialogs and in response to legal obligations are still allowed, and won’t push down the website in Google’s rankings.
This isn’t the first time Google is using interstitials as a ranking signal. The search engine already punishes sites that use them for app install ads.
Source: TechCrunch
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