Does floating social share button invite mobile interstitial penalty?

[McMohan]

So, what is the opinion here? I have a couple of sites that have floating social share button at the footer not covering the content, but it could turn some people off.

[keyplyr]

Google said the interstitial penaly is applied when the ads "make content less accessible to a user."

- Here are the examples Google gave -

• 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.

- Google said these "would not be affected by the new signal."-

• Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.

• Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.

• Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. For example, the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.

[McMohan]

Thanks keyplyr. I understand the above obvious interstitial types. I thought floating social bars might be a borderline case, not specifically named by Google, but still not completely exonerated for not coming in the way of interstitial penalty.

Many popular blogs that were using floating bars have totally removed them from mobile, when they are still used on desktop.

[keyplyr]

I have no evidence either way regarding floating social buttons/bars. Sometimes one site can get away with borderline usage while another gets penalized.

I say consider the documentation then go with your gut.

[fix typo]

[edited by: keyplyr at 7:07 am (utc) on May 16, 2017]

[Robert Charlton]

Purely personal comment... I absolutely hate floating social share buttons. Mainly, they bother me because they usually do cover up or hide the content, or at least they crowd it enough to be a real distraction.

There's also something that's overeager about them... like a dog drooling on your leg while you're trying to eat your dinner.

[keyplyr]

... like a dog drooling on your leg while you're trying to eat your dinner.

Feed the poor thing!

[tangor]

I have js disabled or blocked to prevent things like this. :) About 25% of the web does the same thing.

[McMohan]

like a dog drooling on your leg while you're trying to eat your dinner

I really miss those WhatsApp smilies :-)

A website that had lost 70% of its traffic around mid-2016 (During Panda like Phantom update of June), has a hard time getting back its traffic in spite of lot of effort. Great deal of work put into improve the quality reflected in better usage metrics. It still uses floating bars in mobile, which we got rid of yesterday. Lets see if that changes anything.

[McMohan]

I didn't know Karma will come back to reward me so soon after removing the floating social buttons! Google search traffic increased by 60% between 16 and 17. The primary keyword moved up from #9 to #4.

I don't think removing the floating bar caused rank improvement so soon, it might just be a coincidence. There is some chatter on "Google Updates and SERP Changes" thread about an update underway.