As announced last summer, Google has now rolled out penalties for websites using intrusive mobile popups. The change, first reported in August, will affect ecommerce sites who have failed to adjust to the new guidelines.

Google’s pursuit of greater mobile accessibility has led them to penalize mobile sites that are:

• “Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.
• Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
• Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.”

Source: webmasters.googleblog.com

Some Interstitials, like those required by law or that remain unobtrusive, won’t be penalized - head over to Google’s Webmaster Central Blog for more on those.

Ecommerce companies that still haven’t updated popups for gated content, newsletter signup requests and other type of opt-in popups may have experienced a decline in page ranking. We encourage performing an audit of all mobile popup content and beta testing new content on multiple mobile devices to guarantee the most accessible experience and to minimize SEO risks.