Website owners are being warned that the days of big pop-up ads are drawing to a close, after Google revealed that it is updating the algorithms used to rank search results in a move which will push them down the placings.
Set to come into effect on January 10, the search giant insists the move is designed to make using some of its results less frustrating, although observers point to the ongoing battle the company is mounting against ad-blockers.
In a blog post, the company said: “Pages that show intrusive interstitials [elements that cover the content] provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller.”
Detailing its decision, Google cited three examples of the kind of practices it wanted to eliminate:
- Pop-ups that covered part of the main content when the user clicked on to a page
- An intermediary webpage that had to be dismissed before the main content could be seen
- An ad that filled the web browser’s screen so users had to scroll down ‘below the fold’ before they could see the material they wanted
Pop-up ads: alerts are the exceptions
However, some pop-ups will be exempt, including those which alert readers to the use of cookies, as well as ones which require log-in details to let visitors get behind a paywall.
Daniel Knapp, a senior director of advertising research at the IHS consultancy told the BBC: “Google is one of the largest advertising companies in the world, but it’s in a very different position to Facebook, Snapchat and other global media consumption apps.
“Google is still very reliant on the desktop and mobile web to make money, and it’s much more difficult to clean up that experience than the native app environments. That’s why it needs to tighten the screws on everyone with this crackdown.”
