John Mueller of Google says websites can display pop-ups without being affected by the fine for mobile interstitials, as long as the pop-ups are temporary.
Since the intrusive fine for interim advertising was introduced in 2016, Google’s word has been to prevent pop-ups from appearing on mobile visitors or devaluing your pages on search.
Now we have learned that it is safe to display pop-ups on mobile phones, at least for a limited time.
Mueller says the intrusive interim ads are not high on the priority list for Google’s web spam team.
This topic will be discussed during the Google Search Central office hours on January 22nd. A question is submitted by a website owner asking about using a mobile pop-up for a limited time to capture clues.
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The website owner wants to hold a survey for a week and draw the visitors attention with a pop-up.
Can the site do this without ranking in the search results?
This is what Mueller says.
Google’s John Mueller on pop-ups and mobile searches
Mueller says that a website is unlikely to be devalued in the search results to temporarily show pop-ups to mobile visitors.
Even if Google devalues the site, it will not be removed from the search results. It may even end up in the rankings despite the pop-up.
What is called ‘interstitials’ penalty is more of a subtle ranking, Mueller explains. While subtle, to some extent it may count against a website in Google’s search rankings.
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If you are going to use a mobile pop-up window, Mueller recommends that you do not leave it long and do not show it to every visitor who comes to your site.
‘I do not think we would punish a website for such a thing. The web spam team has other things to do than punish a website for a pop-up.
There are two aspects that can come into play. On the one hand, we have the policy of intrusive interstitials on mobile devices, so it may be something to note that you do not keep it for too long or always show it to everyone.
With the policy, it’s rather a subtle ranking that we use to adjust the ranking slightly when we see that there is no useful content on the page when we load it. It may play something, but it’s more something that will be temporary. ”
Suppose you start showing pop-ups to mobile visitors and plan to do so for a short period of time, but Google immediately picks up the signal. What happens then?
This is not something that will count permanently on your website. Mueller says Google will move on when it searches your site and sees that the popup has been removed.
‘If you have this survey on your site for a week or so, then we can record the signal during that time, we can respond to the signal, and if you remove it, we can actually move on as well. It is therefore not that there will be a lasting effect there. ”
Finally, Mueller adds that websites can experience problems if they display a pop-up instead of proper content. It’s best not to do this as Google will index the content in the popup which will harm rankings.
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‘Another aspect to watch out for is if you show the popup instead of your normal content, then we’ll index the content of the popup. If you see the popup next to the existing content, which sounds like the case, we’ll still need to index the existing content and that’s fine. ”
Hear the full question and answer in the video below: