Google Penalises Websites with Pop-up Ads

Google has announced that they will start penalising websites with intrusive pop-up advertisements.

This means that websites with pop-up ads are likely to be ranked down.

The algorithm update is set to be released on the 10^th January 2017 which gives offenders time to remove or change the pop-ups.

Google has said that this should make clicking on their results less frustrating.

Google 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.”

Pop-ups that will be punished

Google have three examples of the types of pop-ups they want to discourage websites from using:

• Pop-ups that cover the main content when someone accesses the webpage.

• Displaying an intermediary webpage (e.g. an intro page) that has to be dismissed before the main content can be seen.

• Pop-ups that cover the above-the-fold portion of the page, forcing users to have to scroll down the page before they can see the main content.

The exceptions

Google have made a few exceptions to pop-ups such as:

• Pop-ups to alert users to the use of cookies on a website.

• Pop-ups that require log in details or age verifications.

• Very small banner ads.

These types of pop-ups won’t affect your websites rankings.