In their latest effort to provide a more positive mobile user-experience, Google recently announced that as of January 10^th 2017, mobile websites displaying popup ads considered invasive will be penalized in the search engine result pages.

As explained by Google, "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".

So what constitutes “intrusive interstitials”? A Mashable article written by Emma Hinchliffe provides a hint at what publishers should expect:

Image source: Mashable

With this is mind, there will be exceptions made to certain forms of popups:

• Legal obligations such as providing age verification
• Private, unindexible content (typically content users must pay for to receive)
• Banners that don’t take up much space and can be closed with ease

For ecommerce companies who are aggressively using popups to encourage users to opt-in for additional content, it is paramount that a website audit is conducted before the January 10^th deadline. We recommend beta testing all areas where popups are present on multiple mobile devices to ensure they aren’t hindering the user experience.

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