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I know in some industries they can be very profitable, but I don't want to negatively affect my rankings by using them if there are penalties....
I hate pop ups but maybe you can make a few pennies that way. There are probably better ways to focus your energy to make some pennies, but that's up to you...
I would tend to think building up a quality site that people would like to come back to would take a little longer to build but be more profitable in the long run.
If penalties were applied then I would have to make my sites in a way that does not give this additional functionality, not impossible but extra work.
Unwanted pop ups are usually associated with onload or exit scripts so I suppose a filter that could distinguish may be more appropriate, although I have to confess that I have some onload pop ups that I use to promote special offers that I believe would be of interest to my visitors.
Left that one out, but I strongly agree, no point in having loads of bloated images on the page.
I do have a problem with visiting a site, and it opening (often several) other windows full of junk automatically.
However if Google started to penalise against this sort of marketing techique (which I might say can still be uesed legitimately) would that not be the start of Google throwing its weight around and dictating what people put on their websites? Fair enough, Google fighting spam is a good thing, I think we would all agree with that but I don't think that this would be the best way to do it as it would cause many legitimate sites to be penalised.
Google could make it well known that it does not like Popups and no doubt a high percentage of people would stop useing them, such is Google's power and influence. But with power and influence comes responsibility, Google has to recognise (as I am sure that it does) that a decision to penalise Popups would probably harm many business's.
Like I say I do not use Popups........
There might be justification for penalizing exit pop-ups as they are delivered to the user AFTER the user has decided they no longer want to be at the site and have made some action to leave.
This action to leave could include doing another search through the google tool bar or just closing the window activating an exit pop-up.
There is also the problem that as long as there are no penalities there is no limit to the number of exit pop-ups that can be delivered. The webmaster might want to limit the number of pop-ups while the user is viewing the site because they do not want to alienate them but once the user takes an action to leave the webmaster would feel free to deliver as many exit pop-ups as they wanted.
in some industries they can be very profitable
I have to believe that well-designed banner ads would be more effective than popups.
In the old days before popups, and before all the "punch the monkey to win" BS, I actually didn't mind banner ads. I looked at them, and if they were interesting, I even clicked on them. But I won't even read a popup.
I think that people forget that 90% of the internet is there because people are using it to try to make money, from porn to PC sales, methods like exit popups that say "don't forget to sign up for the news letter" and such are no more harmful than banner ads. I agree that some people abuse this by plastering your desktop with 100 porn sites and the number may be on the increase, but penalising all users cannot be the answer, it may be the easy way, but the easy way often is the wrong way and will cause more problems than it fixes.
I think we have to trust Googles judgement in dealing with people who abuse these tools, when you look at it they do a pretty good job!
In short, some exit popups are annoying but the ain't gonna kill ya!
Munst
P.S. I really don't use popups!
Google does not owe selfish webmasters their free traffic. I'm not saying a penalty whereby the site doesn't get spidered, but if there are two sites that come back with a respectable result for a query, the pop up site should be flagged and come second.
Naturally there is an algorithm in effect giving a score internally for each search term. Selfish webmasters deserve to have their score adjusted downwardly somewhat for an onload popup and an even stronger penalty for an exit popup. And Google would be doing nothing wrong. In fact I'm astounded by GG's reply. H1 tags affect your score. Bold affects your score. Title affects your score. Why the heck can't popups, especially exit popups affect your score? It really should...
Sergey says he wants Google to do Good and that's good. And it also promotes best practices by webmasters. And I have doubts about you not using popups only becase you denied it. ;) Just kidding on the last one, all in good fun mate. ;)
Here's a page of comments from google about popups.
[google.com...]
I just think that people should remember that it costs $$$$$$'s to create and maintain a website, I really think its up to the webmaster to do what he feels necessary to get it to earn money (within reason of course). I just dont think surfers need to be treated with kid gloves any more. As long as the popup is relevant I say its legit.
Would you have a site penalised for playing a sound on entry, or using JS for tracking (without the user knowing)or opening up another browser when you click on a link without telling you that clicking on the link will open another browser?
Google does not owe anyone free traffic, but they must be responsible with their influence and realise that whole industries are effected by their decisions. It would be like banning cars because 50% of people drive too fast. It would be the obviouse answer but then the car manufacturing business, tyre manufacturers, mechanics all out of work because someone decided to go for the easy solution of banning cars rather than punishing the people driving them badly.
No offence taken or meant clark, I just love a good argument!
- Don't show results for pages that use popups, or,
- Show pages containing popups at the bottom of the results
etc.
I imagine it would be possible, albeit with some fancy coding, for the user to choose filter settings acording to various criteria like popups, excessive blinking text, mouse trailers, etc.
That way users get to choose all the way what they want their results to be.
How about in the case of a company who use their site as a lead generator creating a popup saying "our office has shut down for christmas" is that selfish and should be penalised?
Yup...he can put it on his homepage somewhere.
I just think that people should remember that it costs $$$$$$'s to create and maintain a website, I really think its up to the webmaster to do what he feels necessary to get it to earn money (within reason of course). I just dont think surfers need to be treated with kid gloves any more. As long as the popup is relevant I say its legit.
Would you have a site penalised for playing a sound on entry,
Oh yeah baby! Even a bigger hit than popups. That's much much worse.
or using JS for tracking (without the user knowing)
or opening up another browser when you click on a link without telling you that clicking on the link will open another browser?
Google does not owe anyone free traffic, but they must be responsible with their influence and realise that whole industries are effected by their decisions. It would be like banning cars because 50% of people drive too fast.
The key to realize is that I'm advocating not a ban but that it is a legitimate algo factor. If I search for a story about levi jeans and I can read about it in two places, one has a popup the other doesn't, I'll choose the nonpopup first as would 99.9999% of the population. What better argument than that for an algo factor for popups?
It would be the obviouse answer but then the car manufacturing business, tyre manufacturers, mechanics all out of work because someone decided to go for the easy solution of banning cars rather than punishing the people driving them badly.
No offence taken or meant clark, I just love a good argument!
Cool, because sometimes I feel guilty about just letting it all go and later realizing someone was offended. It's all in fun. Your ball :)
[thepetitionsite.com...]
This is for AUTOMATIC popups (like when entering or leaving a site), not for simply clicking a link that opens another window.
You can say that maybe there are legitimate reasons for having automatic popup windows (I'm not convinced), but that's kind of irrelevant because you could probably think of a legitimate reason for using ANY of the methods that Google considers spam. Google has to draw the line SOMEWHERE, else the SERPs are all filled with crap. This would be an excellent place to draw the line.
Google's stated mission is to have the SERPs be of value for their users. SERPs that are filled with annoying popups decreases the SERPs' value.
-MBJ-
Just to be clear, we don't penalize for pop-ups, even though some users have requested that.
You don't need to penalize pop-ups, just offer a choice.
Why not add an option to the Advanced Search page to offer to screen out pop-ups?
That'd make your search engine more useful to me, while not penalizing anyone at all -- websites that use pop-ups will still be listed for people who want to see them. Everyone would be happy.
I'm not anti-pop-up, I'm pro-choice!
