Google algorithms and update have always been a hot topic for businesses looking to make their presence felt online. And every update is aimed at refining the search engine to make Google more user-friendly, where people to rely heavily on Google for their day to day queries.
According to data published by Search Engine Land in 2016, around 60 percent of people used their mobile devices to make searches.In 2015, Google’s senior vice president of search, Amit Singhal revealed at Recode’s Code Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that Google saw more than half of its 100 billion monthly searches occurring on mobile devices during the past year, a first for Google. This browsing habit can easily be correlated with the increasing penetration of smartphones all over the world. The task of accessing a PC or laptop for a search seems daunting these days, especially when you are equipped with a device that can serve the purpose quite easily on the go.
However, there is something that was seriously interfering with the user experience on a mobile screen. These are interstitials, such as ads and pop-ups.
Intrusive Interstitials
While searching for a website or app, you might have experienced a type of web page, known as interstitial spaces, that appears either before or after the anticipated web page. Online marketers use these spaces as a promotion tool, where they can add surveys, advertisements, coupons, newsletter signup forms and more.
As mentioned above, with more people using their mobile phones for searches, internet marketers, e-commerce sites, and bloggers have more opportunities for promotions. The emergence of popups is a marketer’s tool to display offers to visitors and grow the list of their email subscribers, according to a recent article on Icegram.
Unfortunately, on a mobile device with a six-inch screen, these interstitial spaces block out the main content of the website or the app, leaving users frustrated. Although these ads hinder the user experience on a desktop as well, by unexpectedly blocking the content, any kind of intrusive interstitials is immensely annoying on a mobile device, since it can ruin the entire experience. Most of the times, users accidentally click open these ads, given that their dismissing button is the smallest possible, almost impossible to click exclusively.
Intrusive Interstitial Penalty: Google’s Update in 2017
The update is good news for users who prefer to use their mobile device for internet searches. Google, which does not find these intrusive interstitials mobile-friendly anymore, has come up with its new algorithm update on January 10, 2017, ensuring that the content of any website does not show any intrusive banners, pop-ups or overlays. Those who are found guilty in this respect will have their content demoted in the mobile search results by Google.
Google has always aimed to provide impeccable search results to its users. From time to time, the search engine comes up with various updates to refine its search results even further and provide the user exactly what they are looking for.
What Happens Exactly?
An ad that suddenly pops up while one is reading content online can be annoying. These intrusive pop-ups, which may appear during page loading or whenever the user scrolls down, minuscule interrupt the browsing experience, says a blog post by SEMGeeks.
It makes the content inaccessible to the user for a few seconds. It then becomes the user’s responsibility to tap the ‘X’, which minuscule on a mobile screen, with their finger to get rid of the ad. After the launch of the Intrusive Interstitial Penalty, such ads will not be acceptable on mobile websites.
By devaluing pages, penalizing them for intrusive popup ads, Google’s intention is to help users gain access to the content they have been searching for originally, which was earlier hindered by the overlays and popups that used to cover most of the mobile screen.
Marcelo Fincher is a blogger & writer on technology related topics with years of experience in studying technological advancements. In his spare time, Marcelo likes to read books and take a walk on the beach.
