Google is once more making it clear what kinds of mobile experiences they want to encourage. Recently, they announced they would start penalizing sites with intrusive mobile interstitials in their search results.
Interstitials, of course, are those images often used in promotions and surveys which cover content, often dimming out the rest of the screen in the process. Today, a site that displays an interstitial when a user directly clicks through from a Google mobile search result can see a negative impact on the site’s SEO. In a quote on the blog article announcing the change, Google says, “[Mobile] pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as high” in search results. This could pose a problem for hoteliers who have relied on this tactic to spotlight promotions, events or other information when visitors click through from search results. Among the types of interstitials that Google considers problematic are:- Popups that cover the main content of a page, whether the message appears right away or as they browse a page
- Standalone popups that users have to dismiss before content can be viewed – for example, an interstitial prompting users to download an app that has to be closed before they can view the page in the browser
- Page layout where content “above the fold” looks like an interstitial, with the original page content laid out inline beneath the fold – for example, prompting users to sign up for an email list before they can scroll down to the rest of the page