Google Says, The Wrong Type of App Interstitials Will Get You Penalised

[engine]

This is an interesting message from google as they recently changed their in-app interstitials.

Some of the operative words include, "hides a significant amount of content"

After November 1, mobile web pages that show an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page will no longer be considered mobile-friendly. This does not affect other types of interstitials. As an alternative to app install interstitials, browsers provide ways to promote an app that are more user-friendly. Google Says, The Wrong Type of App Interstitials Will Get You Penalised [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

[ogletree]

Am I the only one who has never seen the word "interstitial". For those who don't want to go look it up it means "a space between structures or objects". I think they are talking about those pop ups like CNN money that try to get you to install their app instead of going to that page.

I have never seen one that covered up the page. It is normally a tiny rectangle at the top of the screen.

[EditorialGuy]

This does not affect other types of interstitials.

Unfortunately. (And I'd love to get a rumor started about pop-up ads for newsletters, etc. having a negative effect on Google rankings.)

[aristotle]

I started a thread about this annoying problem more than a year ago: [webmasterworld.com ]
and it has only gotten worse since then. Talk about a bad user experience!

I glad to see that Google is finally recognizing the problem, but they should have started taking action a long time ago.

[JAB Creations]

What I really hope this translates in to is not having my leg humped on every damn page I go to for my email address. NO! You may not have my email address! Put that in a form inside the aside element and stop hounding me! This is by far without any doubt the biggest problem I encounter and it's several times a day when I can't find answers to advanced problems or come across some reading material. It could very well be other things or include other things but I'm glad Google can use it's near-monopoly market share to keep shadier webmasters in line sometimes.

John

[TheMadScientist]

I wouldn't count on anything from Google -- They've had the plot "backward" for a while as far as I'm concerned... Too many links (purposely, or via "friendly competition"especially with the same text) real users will never know about === penalty -- Full page div [or whatever] pop-up (let's give it a cool, complicated sounding name like interstitial) that is completely annoying to users and makes them want to click back === No big deal.

I mean seriously, think about it for a minute: You can and have been able to get penalized for links no *real* visitor will ever know about for years, but until now (and even now only on mobile) a full-screen pop-up/overlay (called an interstitial fancily) has been no-big-deal.

All they keep saying to me is: Point === Missed; Plot === Lost -- And, I hate to say it, but shareholders === happy is, IMO, the most reasonable, most likely cause, because they're *far* (very very far) from stupid.

[toidi]

The stupidest ones pop up on first visit to the site asking for a review of the site.

i think the ones goog is after are the ones promoting the downloading of an app.

[WebEnthusiast]

I do believe it will go only towards apps and will stop on it. Google has business in it. As more people will install apps, their search isn't necessary anymore. So by this they try to prevent that.

Sometimes I do understand point of big advertisements of app on page. If website do not have a mobile site instead of it have an app. In addition the desktop site is bad for mobile, many on hover effects, menus etc. I would promote this app to everyone who come on page.

I think people do not like this effect (big popup) because of newsletter abo and other things like that. I think if Google would remove opposite, the advertisement of app wouldn't be a big problem.

[keyplyr]

One of my product affiliates does that. When a mobile user lands on their page coming from mine, the screen is filled 90% by a pop-up that asks for their email address to subscribe to the newsletter (to skip my page altogether going straight to the affiliate.)