According to a news reported on Tuesday, tech giant Google is cracking down websites with ‘intrusive’ pop-up ads. The company will be decreasing such websites’ ranking in their search results. As a result, any website that exhibits pop-up ads that cover the main content on the site will be penalized.
Google strictly wants publishers to end this practice of continuing with pop-up ads covering paramount content on the site. If they do not want to be punished, they should cease this exercise to stay in top of search results.
The change will come into effect from 10th January next year. Moreover, this new rule will be applicable specifically to mobile only. These pop-up ads are generally problematic on smaller screens and that is the reason why it is applied to mobiles.
While announcing the policy, Google stated in a blog post:
“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”
They further added:
“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”
The tech giant, however, has given exemptions to certain kind of pop-ups. Pop-ups which show to verify a user’s age or to notify about a website’s cookies will not be included. This also includes small banner ads and login prompts to access the website.
Google is the most prominent search engines in the world. Tech giant helps drive millions of users to various websites on daily basis. Through this new algorithm, they have given two options to publishers. They have to make a choice either between good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and persistence with pop-ads.
This factor is only one among hundreds that determine search result ranking. The significance of Google results to nearly every site could be enough to encourage publishers to change the common practice. Publishers will need to modify this common practice to achieve better search result rankings.
Google plans to make the web mobile-friendly
Google is eradicating the ‘mobile-friendly’ tag from the search results. The reason behind the removal is that more than 85% of the websites are now mobile optimized for viewing. Moreover, the company is also focused on making the viewing experience on mobile ever-lasting. As a result, their project ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’ is developed to help the pages load simpler and faster.
Do you think this strategy from Google will entice publishers to reduce the number of pop-ads on their websites?
Article and Image Source: Google Blog