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I know there can be a lot of reasons and there generally are, but has anyone seen rankings drop for pages with popups on them? This might be wishful thinking - I almost wish that were the case so I'd run into them less.
I'd be interested to know people's thoughts on this also.
The logical conclusion is to say that pop-ups won't have an effect on ranking, but GG has made it known that they do not like pop-ups. Is GG willing to allow their dislike of pop-ups affect the way they list a site?
Hummmm...
You visit a site, it opens a popup, popup calls javascript functions from its parent and writes out 800 new links in the parent that Google has never seen (because they exist only in the function called by the popup). User follow these links to other sites owned by the same person, and whamo, fresh impressions and click-thoughs everytime someone follows one of these links.
If that actually would work, I can see why Google would frown on popups.
Jordan
I know for a fact that popups do not hurt a site in rankings.
My "feed the kid's" sites all have popups and all perform in the top of the serp's.
This could be a cause, since Googlebot would not have been able to fully crawl the page or perhaps the 3rd party server happened to take a longer than normal amount of time to reply on the day it was crawled.
Does the cache version show anything unusual?
BTW, some of my sites have popups, although they are not third-party, and I have had no drop in the serps.
I wonder if what is at issue isn't the fact that there is a popup, but the amount of time it takes to load the popup (and then load the page). Many months ago, GoogleGuy talked about the amount of time Googlebot would wait for a page to load, and mentioned it had been reduced. I wonder if the waiting time was reduced again recently.
Popups are javascript. Googlebot isn't a browser and doesn't parse javascript. Even if google began to parse/run javascript it wouldn't have to do the things a browser does that take time, like open a new window, resize, etc.
no parsing = no waiting
bot parsing/scripting = quick anyway
Popups are javascript. Googlebot isn't a browser and doesn't parse javascript.
You are right. I do know that many others had been reporting that Googlebot is doing things with the javascript that it has never done before (in the last month or so), so I thought it was worth mentioning. Previously, Googlebot just tended to ignore it. I should have clarified my point better :)
