Google: Sites Can Safely Display Pop-Ups on Temporary Basis
Every day, our SEO specialists, marketers, web designers closely monitor the changes in search engines to improve a sites visibility. From time to time I will share an information in F5 Studio’s blog. Today, you will learn about using pop-ups.
According to Googler John Mueller, the website owners can now display pop-up temporarily in the SEO Google result without a risk of having pages devalued in search..
John Mueller has said that finding intrusive interstitials isn’t currently on the top list of priorities for the Google webspam team.
This topic about the pop up on mobile devices was brought up on 22nd January during Google’s search central office power stream. The question was submitted by a website owner inquiring about using a mobile pop up for a limited period of time to attract and capture the leads. He simply wanted to run a survey at least for a week to direct the attention of the visitors to the Website with a pop-up. But the question is- Is it possible for a site to do that without being degraded in the Google search result?
With the introduction of the intrusive interstitials penalty in 2016, SEOs and website owners are worried that the webpages can be devalued in the search result.
However, it came to light that it is safe to showcase a pop up on mobile as long as it is within the limited time frame.
Let’s check out what John Mueller has to say about this.
Googler John Mueller on pop-ups and mobile search
John Mueller says it is unlikely for a site to be degraded in the SEO Google search result for temporarily displaying pop-up to mobile visitors.
In fact, even if there was a slight chance that Google would devalue the page, there is no way that it will be removed from the search results. There is a possibility that it could even end up ranking despite the pop-up. John Muller further explains that the interstitials, also referred to as a penalty, is more of a subtle ranking factor used by Google. GGoogle uses this factor to adjust the ranking slightly if it sees that there’s no useful content on the page. But it’s more something that would be a temporary thing.
There is a mobile policy of the intrusive interstitials, which is something you must keep an eye on as you should see you don’t show the pop-up to the visitor for too long or show it to everyone every time. So if you want to use pop up make sure not to leave it up for a longer duration and not to show it to every visitor who clicks on the web page.
On the other hand, it is more of a subtle ranking factor that Google uses to adjust the ranking slightly. Let’s consider a situation where you start showing the pop-ups to your mobile visitors, and you continue to do that for a short period of time, but Google catches you on the signal right away. What will happen in such situations? This penalizing policy of Google is not something that will have any negative impact on your site permanently. John Mueller has said that Google will eventually move on when it recrawls and find out that the pop-up from your website has been removed permanently.
However, you must be aware as if you have a pop-up on your Website for a week or more than during this time, the expert team of Google can easily identify you on that signal and respond to it. Thus, you will be asked to permanently remove the pop-ups from the website, and once you have done it, they can eventually move on. So it is clear that there will be no lasting effect of showcasing pop-ups to mobile visitors.
In the end, John Muller stated that the websites could easily get into trouble If they show a pop-up in lieu of proper content. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid such things as Google can easily index content in the pop-up, which eventually is going to harm the rankings.
As we can see this is a common SEO case, so it “depends on”.
Conclusion
It can be said that the years of assumption about the SEO Google pop up has finally been resolved. We now have a clear idea as to how to use the pop-ups the right way so that it won’t affect the websites ranking in any way. Thanks to John Mullet, who explained everything in a way that made things quite easier. Further, the website owners very well understand how they can use pop-ups to their advantage without being penalized by Google. However, you must remember the key here is to not showcase the pop up to the visitors for more than the prescribed period of time or showcase the pop-ups to each visitor on the Website. Doing this will make things problematic for you as Google can easily identify the signal. Therefore, It is better to stay alert while using the pop-ups for a website.
Keep the following instructions in mind, and you will be able to benefit a lot from this feature as all your business goals will be achieved easily and efficiently. Also, you can contact our team to get professional SEO services or SEO-friendly UI/UX design for your business site.
