Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/01/death-to-app-install-interstitials/

by zhuxuefeng1994 • 11 years ago

683 301 11 years ago

techcrunch.com

antr• 11 years ago

Finally, I hope those sites don't even make it to the first serp.

thebokehwokeh2• 11 years ago

They're looking at you http://www.ultimate-guitar.com

benbristow• 11 years ago

That website looks so dated nowadays. Really needs a revamp.

oaktowner2• 11 years ago

Probably because they've been putting all of their resources into the app which they advertise so annoyingly.

Mahn3• 11 years ago

As a beginner guitarist, this is site is the worst. It's a shame that honest sites like olga.net don't exist anymore.

jnevill• 11 years ago

Oh man I miss olga. I had completely forgotten about it. These "newer" sites are the pits and every single one of them does this BS app install crap. Thank goodness for the "View as desktop" button in mobile browsers.

NullCharacter• 11 years ago

My first thought as well. Every time I forget and go to that site from my phone, I die a little.

brobinson• 11 years ago

Someone resurrect powertab.net please!

alexbilbie2• 11 years ago

I hope they also stop serving adverts that redirect from Safari to the App Store too

wlesieutre2• 11 years ago

I thought Safari doesn't even allow this anymore because of all the popup forwarder spam?

alexbilbie2• 11 years ago

I still experience it every so often (iOS 8.4.1). The last time it happened it was on Techcrunch

twoodfin• 11 years ago

UIWebView is definitely still vulnerable, as I've seen it when browsing sites through the default Twitter iOS client. Not as frequently as in the past, however.

jakejake• 11 years ago

Facebook links used to be so bad with this until they changed something in the built-in browser to catch them. Now every time I get a "this page is trying to leave the app" confirmation box I feel extremely satisfied that the redirect was squashed.

nilved• 11 years ago

What about sites that prompt you to enable push notifications?

jasonlotito2• 11 years ago

That is a feature of the browser, and is on the browser to make it not annoying. While it's fair to say you might find it annoying and might not want to see it, others do find it valuable. If a browser feature is annoying you, the correct approach would be to disable that feature in the browser. If the browser doesn't allow you to do this, than it's the browser's implementation that is at fault.

This all assumes the site is using the features the browser makers are telling the sites to use.

pdkl953• 11 years ago

The correct answer is that features like push notifications should be opt-in in the browser. Too many of these features exploit the general ignorance of users.

If a browser feature is annoying you, the correct approach would be to disable that feature in the browser.

Yet when some of us shut off Javascript - a feature that is often annoying, enables many kinds of tracking, and occasionally creates serious security problems - half of HN freaks out. Given that Javascript is necessary for many types of surveillance-as-a-business-model, hostility to the idea of disabling javascript is expected.

Push notifications are still a newer feature, but once that feature becomes entrenched enough that some people's profit depends on the feature, disabling push notifications in the client will be regarded with similar hostility.

Aldo_MX• 11 years ago

And when will they punish advertisements that redirect to app stores? or even worse, websites that activate WAP subscriptions...

tbranyen• 11 years ago

I read this as publishing and was getting mad, then I read the article and smiled. Thanks Google! I absolutely hate sites that do this.

ianphughes3• 11 years ago

I still do not understand the popularity of this approach. It seems to crazy increase bounce rates. You would think that negative user behavior would already make these undesirable without Google being explicit?

s3r3nity2• 11 years ago

As someone working in tech, and does digital marketing consulting, there is actually a lot of value in these interstitials: 1) Usually the app is infinitely better than the mobile web experience. You can chalk it up to prioritization of engineering working on iOS / Android app development over a mobile web experience -- usually for good reason. 2) It's a solid retention strategy. You can harp on about bounce rates reducing activation rates (bounce rates aren't as high as you might think btw in certain cases) but at the end of the day, a 1% increase in repeat purchase rate (or insert other retention metric here) will have a much much more significant impact than a 1% increase in activation.

It only works for certain scenarios and cases, but at the end of the day, there's significant data to show that they work.

ianphughes3• 11 years ago

I am not sure I agree with your first point. It seems the most frequent case is that a user wants to access content right away. Regardless of how much "better" the native experience might be, its a lot of hoops to jump through to fulfill the immediate need.

I certainly can't argue that it does yield positive business results under certain scenarios, but for the average user it seems to injure common web experiences.

_delirium• 11 years ago

One unfortunate thing that imo is increasing the value of app installs (and therefore how much "collateral damage" in bounce rates is worth it) is that companies are starting to use them as a push ad platforms. Once your app's on the phone, you can push notifications whenever you want, not only when the user is actively using the app. While with a mobile website, once they navigate away from the site you can't push ads until the next time they visit.

The Hotwire Android app was the first one I noticed doing this, raising notifications unrelated to actual use of the app (e.g. for bookings). If they have a general promotion, like "fall sale" or something, they push a notification to a targeted subset of users. In their case there isn't even an option in the app settings to opt out of the notification spam. Yelp was the second app I found doing this, but they at least have an opt-out in their settings menu. For apps that don't, you can entirely revoke their notification privileges in the central Android settings, but I doubt the average user knows how to do that.

My dislike for playing whack-a-mole with this kind of nonsense is why I don't install apps anymore (outside a few trusted exceptions, like Wikipedia's app), and just use mobile websites.

jackmaney• 11 years ago

1) Usually the app is infinitely better than the mobile web experience.

Don't give a fuck. If I wanted your shitty app, I would have gone to the Play store and installed it. If I want to go to your website, then I want to fucking go to your website. Don't be a bag of rancid dicks and redirect me.

2) It's a solid retention strategy.

[Citation Needed]

roasm2• 11 years ago

I generally agree with these points. We ended up with an interstitial the same way I hope most everyone else did: we A/B tested it, and the results were clearly positive on engagement and purchase.

We could choose to drop the interstitial as a matter of principal or on the assumption that the difficult-to-quantify long-term benefit will pay off later, but we'd have to make that decision not in the absence of data, but actually in opposition to the data.

Or let Google make the decision for us...

exodust7• 11 years ago

"Usually the app is infinitely better than the mobile web"

Can you provide an example of an app that is infinitely better than its mobile website?

If you can just provide one example, and not any of the tech giants. One example where there's a "mobile web experience" as you put it, and a native app.

knodi1232• 11 years ago

Seems like it would, but the people who bounce probably aren't your most profitable users anyway.

I was shocked to learn how effective interstitial popup subscription requests are: http://optinmonster.com/3-reasons-lightbox-popups-capture-mo...

greglindahl3• 11 years ago

This article is about exit popups. I suspect everyone here thinks Google is talking about entrance popups.

scrabble• 11 years ago

This article is on a site that productizes this exact thing. Can't really take that on completely good faith.

ianphughes3• 11 years ago

Perhaps, but if I increase my bounce rate by 80%, that still represents a large new pool of users that I could have monetized but never could now, no?

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

Works the same as nigerian prince stories - it filters out smart people and leaves you with suckers.

justincormack• 11 years ago

Does this apply to "please subscribe to our stupid newsletter" that obscures many sites now?

volaski3• 11 years ago

I'm more annoyed with these sites than the app install sites. "Install our app" is annoying but still trying their best to send us where we will have better have better experience (at least that's what they think). These "subscribe to our newsletter" sites do it for their own good and couldn't care less about visitors. They do it so they can spam them with their emails

LukeB_UK2• 11 years ago

"Install our app" is annoying but still trying their best to send us where we will have better have better experience

Not always, apps give them the ability to have push notifications plus the fact that having the app icon in your app tray is a constant reminder of their service.

taco_emoji• 11 years ago

My favorite is when I click a link in an e-mail newsletter (I'm on one for a local news site) and... get a popup asking me to sign up for the newsletter.

Retra• 11 years ago

They should send the better experience to where you are.

redml• 11 years ago

Those are particularly annoying when im halfway through reading and they popup out of nowhere. I'm surprised it's an effective tactic at all to annoy readers (it has to be effective if they're doing it).

LukeB_UK2• 11 years ago

What disappoints me most is that a lot of the sites submitted here use this same super annoying tactic.

0x0• 11 years ago

For those I just enter webmaster@<domain-name> or even the author's email if that's listed :P

bbcbasic3• 11 years ago

They are probably already subscribed (to test it works). Better to enter a duff@emailaddress.com which will mess up their stats.

irl_zebra2• 11 years ago

I usually go with ihopeyouchoke@imnotsubscribing.com

rhizome5• 11 years ago

sales@mailchimp.com

steveax• 11 years ago

I used to use root@localhost but sadly that rarely works anymore.

shaftway• 11 years ago

god@heaven.mil

kristopolous• 11 years ago

all mine go straight to bobby tables.

zamalek• 11 years ago

I simply close the page and move on: if they don't care about obscuring the content then surely they don't have much confidence in said content and neither should I.

jtwebman• 11 years ago

I hope so!

sgustard• 11 years ago

Per http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/09/mobile-fr...

"After November 1, mobile web pages that show an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page will no longer be considered mobile-friendly. This does not affect other types of interstitials."

This implies the answer is No, since that's another type of interstitial (not an app install) -- but is one that blocks most of the page content. It's curious that they're analyzing the nature of the popup closely enough to determine that.

jfoster3• 11 years ago

Perhaps they're approximating by analyzing the page as a mobile user agent and a non-mobile user agent, then comparing.

tripzilch2• 11 years ago

Which is weird because most of the reasons they give are valid for any type of interstitial, there's not a lot of reasons that set app interstitials apart from others that are relevant to the user.

They're basically a new kind of pop-up window, an annoyance that you have to click away.

I don't remember browsers only blocking certain kinds of pop-ups based on content, they just see if it wasn't initiated by a user-action, it'll get blocked.

I suppose for Google there may be some reasons why they want to block the app-interstitials (I guess because they want to encourage keeping the content they index on the web, not in an app?), but even then, that's still no reason not to punish the other types of interstitial just as much. Trying to make the distinction is just making it harder on themselves, they will occasionally get it wrong, or people will complain that their interstitial shouldn't be punished because it is (somehow) not quite about the app--making the criteria a bit broader seems like it's easier for Google and better for the users?

cm21873• 11 years ago

The other classic is welcoming you on the first second of your first visit with a css pop-up hiding the site to ask you some feedback.

gjolund• 11 years ago

I'd really like to see a universal app / site rating service that judges apps / sites on their stability, privacy, security, legitimacy of requested permission, and general UX.

It could then provide alternatives to the app / site, and possibly even an anonymous whistleblower service for employees .

guptaneil• 11 years ago

This. A Yelp for websites that encourages sites to be good web citizens.

n0us4• 11 years ago

I would like to see a vote based search engine with modified reddit-style searching where a single vote's relevance is a function of its age and the number of existing votes. (but without the post life cycle of reddit where posts drop because of age)

madsushi2• 11 years ago

Seems a bit hypocritical, considering they were using app install interstitial pages as recently as July:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/google-...

Mahn3• 11 years ago

Based on these results, we decided to permanently retire the interstitial.

Well at least they admitted they are bad, even if they tried them.

OJFord• 11 years ago

Not really, seeing as the article you link addresses that?

It's like a car company saying "we used to only make black cars, but actually we looked into it, and now we think people want colours; so we're making them".

madsushi2• 11 years ago

Continued:

"So we're making them, and we're penalizing any dealerships that are still selling black cars."

nathancahill• 11 years ago

Still exists for Gmail (on iOS at least).

x0x04• 11 years ago

Annoying ads are only to be purchased through google, peon.

You cut them out, they cut you.

davidw• 11 years ago

When are they going to shit-can sites that have tiny 'next' buttons next to big Google ads with arrows in them? The ones like "20 pictures of celebrities' hairy moles!".

kevando• 11 years ago

Google will soon start encouraging you to continue using their apps. FTFY

lunz• 11 years ago

Hopefully Google can distinguish them from the "By browsing this site, you accept the use of Cookies [X]"-popups that EU websites have to implement now.

jacquesm2• 11 years ago

Hopefully they can't. Maybe that way we can finally get rid of those pop-ups because there will be a very large amount of noise.

bouke• 11 years ago

Site owners should be punished for those banners, as they could refrain from using third party tracking cookies instead.

greglindahl3• 11 years ago

The EU law doesn't specify the mechanism used to inform the user. If you look around at different websites, several mechanisms are used, some more obnoxious than others. Popups are the worst user experience of the lot.

ascagnel_2• 11 years ago

Unlikely -- those links usually don't contain links to your platform's respective app store.

jacquesm2• 11 years ago

Does that mean they'll block youtube? Try playing a video on a phone that does not have the youtube app installed, it's just about impossible to get it right, it's a roulette that's rigged with more than half the links going to the youtube app page on google play. Highly annoying since there is no reason why the youtube page of some video should even have that app installation link at all.

BorisMelnik• 11 years ago

is this true on iPhone as well?

stakecounter• 11 years ago

No. I never use the YouTube app on my iphone. I always play a video by doing:

Chrome app -> youtube.com (no prompt to install/switch to YouTube app, simply redirects me to m.youtube.com) -> search video -> play (which plays out of chrome and does not switch). The whole process is exactly how I'd hope/expect it to be.

I've exclusively used Youtube through the chrome app instead of the Youtube app because a few years ago I found that the search results were significantly worse/more heavily filtered through the Youtube app for some reason and never used it again.

Alphasite_• 11 years ago

Yes. If you have the app installed infuriatingly persistent, less so if you dont. Not having the app installed means you have to deal with the terrible youtube web player (which doesn't even use native fullscreen!).

kuschku13• 11 years ago

Exactly. And, even worse, when trying to play the video on youtube on mobile, I often get "this video is not available in embed mode, please click here to go to youtube, and it reloads the same page -.-

stcredzero4• 11 years ago

Are mobile devs not eating their own cooking anymore? I can't do anything on a smartphone anymore, outside of some very well worn ruts, that doesn't involve encountering some annoyance like this somewhere between twice an hour to every other minute.

coolbeans2016• 11 years ago

If your rooted, install XDA's framework, they have some youtube modules that give you back control over how youtube works on your device, period!

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

"Do as I say, not as I do."

zorpner• 11 years ago

Relevant: https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/439125570115223552

rtpg• 11 years ago

Except google _has_ punished its own sites before, so calling them hypocrites so early seems a bit too trigger-happy to me

LoSboccacc3• 11 years ago

yeah, especially annoying as they made provisions in their own browser to cheat on certain pages (like google homepage not needing permission to access the microphone)

double scary since it seems google is in a position now to steer (or probably 'make it better for users', in their view) the whole www just by tweaking page ranks

prodmerc2• 11 years ago

How else do you open YouTube on your phone? :-)

cpach• 11 years ago

By opening the web browser and surfing to youtube.com :D

ma2rten• 11 years ago

I think it's possible that they will penalize youtube. Previously Google's Webspam team manually penalized Google Chrome's site, so it didn't even rank for the search term "browser".

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-penalizes-chrome/3...

jlarocco• 11 years ago

gmail.com does the same thing, and it's super annoying.

huskyr• 11 years ago

Same thing for Google Calendar. You'll have to hunt for the tiny 'I'm one of those people that is perfectly happy with the website, please skip this crap' link somewhere in a tiny font in a hidden corner of the interstitial.

xiaoma• 11 years ago

I sure hope so. Google has been a pretty bad offender across the board as far as pushing users to install their mobile apps: https://twitter.com/mdudas/status/638792939842469893/photo/1

Even more extreme is that every single time I click a link in a hangouts chat on iOS, it asks me if I want to download Chrome.

nevir• 11 years ago

Yes, most likely they will downrank youtube until the youtube team fixes it

kuschku13• 11 years ago

And still embed YouTube results in the search...

The EU investigation committee is going to love this.

wodenokoto• 11 years ago

Is that an android thing? I only have iOS and cannot recognize that at all.

mastazi• 11 years ago

I use both iOS and Android and I experience the problem pretty often, regardless of which mobile OS I'm using. It might actually be more common on iOS since there are more apps in the App Store than in Play Store, however I don't have numbers backing my guess. In either case it's very annoying, as this type of interstitial prevents you from accessing the content. As the article explains, small install banners at the top of the page as still OK (and honestly I'm OK with that too).

cscurmudgeon• 11 years ago

Also Gmail just after you log in. Don't know if that counts. The link to skip is tiny and looks like a privacy notice link.

sowbug• 11 years ago

Google is coming around on the issue, thanks in part to their study showing 69% of users abandoning the site at the interstitial: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/google-ca...

Kiro• 11 years ago

Isn't this a different thing? Aren't you talking about links which the phone recognise as YouTube links and open the app for you? While the article is talking about popups.

jsingleton• 11 years ago

Hopefully they'll move their own products to use the solution built into mobile chrome [0]. I hope that this "official" way of prompting users isn't penalised. The engagement logic is in the browser and as a developer you can't override it and force it to show. It makes testing it interesting! I dug into the code and wrote up my findings in a couple of blog posts [1].

[0] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing...

[1] https://unop.uk/dev/experience-with-mobile-chrome-app-instal...

Edit: In case it's not clear, this isn't just for web apps. As of at least a month ago (Chrome 44) you can add native app install banners to a website [2].

[2] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/increasing...

JupiterMoon2• 11 years ago

I hope so. This is why I don't bother watching youtube videos on my phone anymore...

copsarebastards• 11 years ago

God I hope so. Along with penalizing YouTube for throwing JavaScript errors because they can't figure out how to connect to the Chromecast correctly.

saidajigumi2• 11 years ago

Ugh, maybe this will finally push forums to burn those infernal Tapatalk interstitials. Forum owners: I'm looking for one piece of information from a web search, not a whole dumb app that will completely ignore my search goals.

Vexs• 11 years ago

God I hate tapatalk with a passion. It's even worse when it redirects you to the front of a forum instead of the thread you were trying to get to.

axx• 11 years ago

Even worse, there are a lot of sites with outdated and insecure tapatalk plugins. We ran tapatalk for a few month and you had to patch it every other week. Maybe they fixed many of those issues by now, but it is still annoying.

alkonaut5• 11 years ago

Tapatalk splash is a sure sign of a phpBB forum, meaning I won't find what I'm looking for anyway. Close tab.

I can't believe those forums don't just migrate to Discourse.

saidajigumi2• 11 years ago

a phpBB forum, meaning I won't find what I'm looking for anyway.

I'll have to disagree on this point. There are a lot of phpBB forums out there, and their quality and content varies widely as the Internet itself. Many of them, esp. some of the long-established ones, are invaluable sources for all sorts of arcana. Wikipedia doesn't even begin to touch the kinds of obscure practical knowledge embedded in the "dark web" of phpBB forums. There are a lot of Google searches for which a single post by some domain expert is the top result, many of which in old, old forum software of some sort, usually phpBB.

FWIW, I've never once run into a Discourse forum in the wild, i.e. via a web search, site link, etc.

aikah• 11 years ago

well , it's easy , because Discourse is extremely complicated to deploy for the average joe. phpBB is ... in php , ie cheap hosting , sftp deployment ... Server side Ruby was never easy to deploy.

buckbova• 11 years ago

I still search old car repair threads all too frequently. I'm okay with the phpBB.

cdash• 11 years ago

I just checked out discourse and honestly as a user I would rather use phpbb than that. Im sure discourse is a much better piece of software but I can not stand the format.

LoSboccacc3• 11 years ago

isn't discourse asking for money?

SmellyGeekBoy• 11 years ago

You're saying the underlying platform somehow has some bearing on the quality of the users and the content? Don't get me wrong, I agree phpBB is outdated but well-established, long-running forums are a goldmine of information.

reilly30002• 11 years ago

I've never actually taken the bait. What is the app like?

jbigelow763• 11 years ago

I must be in the minority but the Tapatalk app seems okay to me. It takes the cruft and ads out of the forum you are on and just presents you the content in a relatively stripped down format.

Maybe my use case is out of the ordinary compared to a lot of HN, I use it for a single forum that I am an active member of, and I can't recall the last time I googled something and was redirected to a result that was a forum entry that redirected to a Tapatalk ad (99% of my google searches end up at stackoverflow or blog entries).

danielrakh• 11 years ago

I can't help but think this is a jab at Apple for allowing ad blockers in iOS 9.

tajen2• 11 years ago

For once the consumer experience wins on the two fronts.

Or maybe the UX used to suck on the two because of a secret non-agression pact between Google and Apple ;)

avemg• 11 years ago

In and of itself I really like this move, but I have to wonder if it's good thing in the long run to allow Google to assert its vision of good UX on the entire web. Where's the line? Of course nobody is forcing websites to do anything, but Google is such an important traffic driver it's hard to imagine a site not having to comply to survive.

leereeves• 11 years ago

What's the alternative to allowing Google to rank results as it chooses?

profinger2• 11 years ago

Be really mad and use AskJeeves. lmao

EarthLaunch• 11 years ago

Government forcing them to modify that based on 'fairness', 'need', etc. It's coming and it will be supported by HN, for obvious reasons.

wcummings• 11 years ago

Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites That Use Competing Ad Platforms

n0us4• 11 years ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I have wondered this myself. Between punishing sites that are not mobile responsive and this move I wonder if their motivations are partly fueled by the fear that mobile users are spending more times within native apps and not enough time on the web.

As you can read here their response to the EU antitrust lawsuit http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/internal-google-memo-respon... google makes the argument that users spend a lot of time inside apps. I would expect they are worried about the ability for users to go directly to content and bypass search from which they make money.

I'm not sure which side of the fence I fall on. The web is arguably a more open technology than native apps but the experience in a native app is often better.

matchu6• 11 years ago

I think you're right that Google are worried about users moving to a market where they're not relevant. That's why Google have made a point of becoming relevant: they have a mobile OS, a mobile app market, and a mobile app ad platform.

If people move away from web and toward Google's mobile properties, then they're probably pretty okay with that.

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

Between punishing sites that are not mobile responsive and this move I wonder if their motivations are partly fueled by the fear that mobile users are spending more times within native apps and not enough time on the web.

I think its more driven by the fact that more of Google search traffic comes from mobile, so its more critical that the results provide a good experience on mobile.

matchu6• 11 years ago

No need to slippery-slope this one. Google have been very consistent about ranking exclusively based on UX quality. Once they actually decide to rank based on something else, then we can start raising a fuss about it.

Until then, the snark seems unwarranted, though I agree that there's good reason to be concerned: they definitely have a lot of power here, despite not having seemed to abuse it yet. That seems like an interesting conversation to have, especially in a more substantive format.

serge2k• 11 years ago

You know, at some point (and we are around that point) Google does cross a line where they are abusing their near monopoly on search. This is a pro consumer move, but it's another instance of Google saying do things our way or we punish you.

jmscharff2• 11 years ago

But when that happens you can always use....Bing :)

avar• 11 years ago

It's not at all unreasonable that if sites want to be indexed for their content that a search engine penalizes them if they don't display that content prominently once the user lands on the site and instead display some advert orthogonal to what the user wanted.

matchu6• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what makes this abuse. Curating the content you serve isn't just okay; it's one of the key value propositions of a search engine. The problem is when a content provider, for whatever reason, intentionally curates in a way that provides less value to the consumer.

jbigelow763• 11 years ago

So what about an OS vendor that "curates" a particular default browser and destroys a competing browser provider in the process? I seem to remember that happening a few years back.

It's not so much the curating that's the problem, nobody would care if Duck Duck Go did it, the problem is with the regulators that view Google to be the only curator out there.

tzs• 11 years ago

One potential problem here is that this only applies to page blocking interstitials that promote an app. Page blocking interstitials that push signing up for a newsletter, for example, will not be penalized.

It could be hard to argue that an interstitial pushing an app (especially an app specifically for the site the user is visiting that gives them enhanced features compared to the mobile web version of the site) is more annoying, distracting, or otherwise harmful to a user than any other kind of blocking interstitial.

Thus, one might try to conclude that Google's actual interest here is trying to keep users from using apps to access content instead of using the web site where Google is more likely to be the ad provider.

I have no idea if this could rise to the level of an antitrust violation, but it's the first place I'd look for one.

noblethrasher• 11 years ago

Google's job is to get you the information that you want as fast as possible. Said another way, it wants to get you off of its search results page as soon as it can.

This is anecdotal, but I almost always abandon pages that lead to an app interstitial, which means that I end up back on the results page. This is a pretty unambiguous signal to Google that the search result was bad. So, the remedy that they're proposing is good and obvious.

bad_user• 11 years ago

Personally I believe this is only fair, because such websites are abusing the inner workings of Google's crawler while displaying to users something else that the crawler doesn't see. I always wondered why such tactics aren't penalized, such as websites placed behind a paywall by means of Javascript, like the Experts-Exchange of old or these websites that show slimy full page ads, sometimes with broken links. And don't get me wrong, I'm actually for paywalls and ads, I'm fine with whatever business model can keep the lights on, but then if you want web-scale traffic, it's not morally justifiable to piggyback on the open-web. If you want to sell your slimy app, then use an app store instead of tricking a web search engine.

Also, Google's search engine has never, ever, ever been objective in the signals used for ranking. Their results have been different and biased ever since the start, which is what made their search engine successful in the first place. It's a little late to complain about that.

vacri2• 11 years ago

There was a time when the circumvention for the Experts-Exchange paywall was "scroll down a bit" - the data had to be visible to the googlebot, and they made it look obscured at the top, but it was all there and readable a few 'pages' down.

prawn2• 11 years ago

And where does it end? With them dictating design? Demote sites they think are ugly? Or that don't validate?

Why only this type of interstitial and not those pushing newsletters or paywalls or surveys? "I know you've only just arrived and read all of one sentence but CHECK OUT OUR NEWSLETTER!"

michaelpinto• 11 years ago

My gut tells me that unless thing change the open web is not going to do well as mobile dominates: This in itself is going to eat away Google's core business while Facebook dominates on mobile. And the funny thing is that the sites that beg you to install an app are doing so because they see where things are going with the open web.

PS Another thing that may also hurt Google's core business may be once Apple starts blocking their ads. Google ads will become the next Flash.

thrownaway2424• 11 years ago

What ad network is it that serves up ads that actually open up the iOS App Store, without having tapped on anything? That's super annoying.

3JPLW• 11 years ago

Rotten Tomatoes was serving one of those last week. Made me very mad.

cm21873• 11 years ago

My personal solution is to install the app, give it a very bad rating with the reason why I am pissed off as a comment and delete the app.

dizzyviolet• 11 years ago

Ohhh. I like that idea. I'm going to start doing that.

lucidstack• 11 years ago

Ultimate Guitar, I'm looking at you. The worst.

skeletonjelly• 11 years ago

Their push to install the app is horrendous. It just keeps getting worse too!

rhizome5• 11 years ago

That happens in Android sometimes, too, but my evidence-free sense is that it's usually rogue ad network participants because the app is usually some mundane game.

shostack• 11 years ago

That and I wonder if the ads themselves don't contain Apple affiliate links and are just cookie stuffing.

nailer• 11 years ago

Also how is iOS so bad it just opens the Store without asking?

signal11• 11 years ago

That's not iOS, just Safari. Tweetbot, for example, prompts you if a webpage within it tries to take you out of the app.

neoCrimeLabs2• 11 years ago

This is a little curmudgeonly, but this is how I feel...

If your developers are not capable of making your website mobible friendly in 2015, any app they develop is likely worse. This is especially true when your app demands access to everything on my phone even though it doesn't need any of it to function.

LiquidFlux• 11 years ago

I think it's more likely related to the forums which advertise the Tapatalk application, via a forum plugin.

pyre• 11 years ago

Even Google violates this though. Google Inbox is a good example of this. Compare Google Inbox in Chrome Mobile vs. the native app.

roasm2• 11 years ago

You're suggesting that you can make something as usable on a mobile browser as you can with a native app. That's just not true; if it were, there wouldn't be any native apps.

For many use cases (games, highly interactive experiences, camera or microphone using app, etc.), a native app may just be better, and guiding users there might be a better experience and a better conversion funnel.

Yes, you can make a website mobile friendly, but that doesn't mean it will be as good as the native app.

stcredzero4• 11 years ago

Often, the native app is just as bad or worse! At least the just-as-bad native app didn't soak up your time and bandwidth!

click170• 11 years ago

You're suggesting that you can make something as usable on a mobile browser as you can with a native app. That's just not true; if it were, there wouldn't be any native apps.

In the context of forums though, its entirely true and accurate.

If we were talking about apps, as in things that require more than an internet connection to work, I would agree with you.

Just because you can make it an app, doesn't mean you should.

moblesque• 11 years ago

> You're suggesting that you can make something as usable on a mobile browser as you can with a native app.

http://mobile.weather.gov/ would disagree with you.

neoCrimeLabs2• 11 years ago

It's absolutely true that a native application can be more functional than a mobile friendly website.

When it comes to websites that try to force their app upon you when visiting their mobile website, my experience has almost always bee n the application is as bad as, if not worse than, the website's functionality. This gets to my point that if your developers are not capable of building a decent mobile friendly website then they are probably not any better at building an app.

Also I hinted at the fact that in many cases these apps appear to be designed to track users and invade users privacy. Why else do so many need access to contact lists and more when their functionality doesn't remotely require it.

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

Actually I see this as a monetization issue. As site visitor all I have is your IP address and typical user-agent stuff. That doesn't get me much money.

In the world of apps, I can fool you into giving up your location (or on android just sample it as needed without the end user knowing) and other privacy stealing tricks I can resell to advertisers and marketers. I can also embed ads right into my application and have IAP to make even more money.

Until the mobile platforms fix these issues, there will be a financial incentive to push apps over pages. That's the elephant in the room here.

squiggy22• 11 years ago

Ha. Yet their advertising optimisation teams continue to tout the benefits of implementing an interstitial ad unit on mobile:

https://developers.google.com/mobile-ads-sdk/docs/dfp/androi...

Edit. More here:

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/mobile-ads-intersti...

Left hand doesn't know what right hand is doing.

blowski• 11 years ago

As I understood the article, they're not discouraging all full page interstitial ads, just the ones which tout the mobile app of the website itself on first screen load.

blazespin• 11 years ago

As techchrunch pointed out, Google doesn't monetize iOS apps very well. Left and right hands are very much in sync.

oaktowner2• 11 years ago

Those links appear to be about ads within apps, not on web pages.

They can often be annoying, but that's different than interstitials on top of a mobile web site, right?

manigandham5• 11 years ago

Yes, in-app is a very different environment from mobile web.

Also they only want to stop full page ads pushing to download the app, not any other full page ad.

jbigelow763• 11 years ago

The most annoying aspect of app install interstitials is when the publisher doesn't offer a version of their app for your platform, which for us Windows Phone users is pretty much all of them. One more indignity I guess :)

smegel• 11 years ago

Which seems to be like 90% of them. Good guy Google for once.

unfunco• 11 years ago

Is it? It might seem like it's good guy Google, but Google is a company with shareholders and their mission objective (despite what they claim) is to maximise profit for their shareholders. They're the most powerful advertising agency in the world and they're punishing smaller advertising models.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike advertising; I'd rather pay for content, but this strikes me as anti-competitive.

mark_l_watson• 11 years ago

Fantastic - so glad to see this. I use a browser to use facebook and twitter on my android phone. No I don't want to install an app, thanks!

Still, G's new policy allows small install the app links, which is fine because a lot of people do want the app versions of web properties.

Fomite• 11 years ago

I expect them to get rid of the "You know you can install the App!" ads on Gmail for iOS first.

amelius• 11 years ago

You can say what you want about this benefiting the end user, but Google is acting as a market regulator now.

evboyle• 11 years ago

cough * cough * linkedin

mischanix• 11 years ago

These kinds of ads are the reason I leave javascript disabled on my phone. It prevents all kinds of annoyances and saves a significant amount of battery as well.

exodust7• 11 years ago

Yes but that's annoying when you want JS enabled to view something like a slideshow on a web page. Swiping from one image to the other requires JS, and you need to go into settings and turn it on. Then remember to turn it off again.

And you might not even know there's a gallery to view, because without JS the fallback might be a single image rather than a prompt to swipe the slideshow.

When the simple act of swiping within a web page requires JS, you're crippling your own experience. Not to mention all the other JS-powered functions on a page. Adding things to a shopping cart etc, is much more user friendly with JS enabled.

prodmerc2• 11 years ago

Does that mean the death of Tapatalk? 'cause I'm all in. Stop pestering me to install your stupid app, I like my browser just fine...

dtournemille• 11 years ago

Is it Google's "job" to police websites in this fashion?

MichaelGG• 11 years ago

Ffs yes. Google's entire point of existence is to rank sites. Literally that's the only function of a search engine.

exodust7• 11 years ago

Google isn't banning websites, only denying them "mobile friendly" status, which naturally downranks them. Fair enough too. When you click a search result link, you want the information, not a full screen ad that's hard to close.

marak830• 11 years ago

I wonder if this has anything todo with apples push to block adverts to get people to make an app(and thus advertise that app on their site).

Maybe i'm looking too much into this ;)

sharkweek• 11 years ago

As a user, I'm pro-getting rid of interstitial ads on mobile. But just for dissenting opinion, this definitely feels monopolistic.

"Stay on the native web so we can sell more ads!"

Maybe it's mutually beneficial for Google and its search users, but this is certainly the argument that's going to come from folks who are about to lose a ton of app downloads.

http://searchengineland.com/google-goes-app-interstitial-pro...

matchu6• 11 years ago

If anyone tries to make that argument, the counter will be simple: "We want developers to make native apps! That's why we're making App Indexing a thing."

There's definitely some advantage to keeping people on the web, since App Indexing requires buy-in from content producers, but, if browsers start truly losing to native apps, Google are prepared.

https://developers.google.com/app-indexing/

look_lookatme• 11 years ago

maybe they should punish their fucking AdX buyers that redirect people to the app stores for a change

note: i work for a publisher and when an app store redirect comes through AdX or AppNexus and someone makes a complaint it is one of the worst, most helpless feelings. this is why people use adblock and there is nothing we can do because the networks are, still, an important part of our entire revenue stream

zaczac• 11 years ago

google is the biggest ads app. how funny

cm21873• 11 years ago

I can't resist mentioning that one of the greatest offenders is news.google.com

teaneedz• 11 years ago

Can't wait to see the Yahoo! interstitial news app go away or at least stop hijacking the whole screen.

titfn• 11 years ago

How many years did it take for Google to react to this?

mada2993• 11 years ago

I think it's interesting that they are making this decision - one that clearly pushed users to stay on the mobile web which is beneficial for Google - based on a study that was pretty flawed. This article debunks their methodology pretty well: https://medium.com/@alexaustin/just-because-it-s-google-does...

Filligree• 11 years ago

Hush, don't tell them--they might decide not to do it.

mada2993• 11 years ago

I built an app without having a website before so I get the perspective of the app developer here too - trying to get people to their app. But I agree that interstitials is not the answer. We ended up building mobile app content previews (deepviews) for all the apps using our deeplinks (I work for Branch.io) which work much better.

EricBurnett• 11 years ago

Thanks for the link, that's a nice critique. That said, much of their arguments don't apply here. The article take the publisher's ("businesses") perspective, but that's not consistent with a search engine in this case - the original study is more accurate from the perspective of optimizing for the search user.

The business wants to convert low-value mobile users into high-value app installers, and would happily sacrifice most to get a few installs if that's net positive on long-term value. The search engine, on the other hand, wants as many users as possible to be successful in finding what they're looking for. These perspectives are not aligned - high abandonment rates due to interstitials can be fine for the business, yet penalized as destinations from a search engine. The underlying question is who Google optimizes for in this case, the user or the destination.

mada2993• 11 years ago

Hi Eric, good points. But what about the case in which what a user is looking for is actually inside the app? More of mobile traffic is moving into apps - shouldn't we find ways to also index and show content as well?

rubyn00bie• 11 years ago

tldr; Cool... but shouldn't google stop policing the internet and abusing, what some might call, monopoly powers for trivial gains.

======

I'd be willing to bet, this will one day be in an FTC/DOJ report about monopoly practices at Google...

Google seems to have forgotten they don't want to be looked at as a monopoly or abusing their power for the small things. While this is consumer friendly, at least at first glance, I still find it anti-competitive and generally worthless exertion of their near monopoly power.

It also effects them quite heavily (GMail being my prime example). If I had to guess, this is a decision by someone who is lacking the resources to fully grasp the decision and potential long term ramifications of their action. Maybe they do, but for a company of their size this seems petty.

The potential anti-trust lawsuit however will not be petty.

markdown• 11 years ago

This is like a television service provider pledging to give their customers (who want high quality tv shows) more high quality tv shows and less shitty shows.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 11 years ago

This isn't an anti-trust issue. Google's not using its market dominance to move into a new market.

It's more like a common practice by retailers: using their market share to force changes by their suppliers. For example, Tesco (the largest UK supermarket) recently banned certain sugary drinks targeted at children.

kuschku13• 11 years ago

But Google is, even today still using these same interstitial ads for Gmail.

That means it will most likely end up in some antitrust trial.

bradgessler• 11 years ago

Content publishers have created a really bad situation for themselves on the web from these types of ads, slow Javascripts, and other "ad tech" excesses.

Apple is responding with ad blocking technology and a news app. Facebook has responded with articles that load quickly from their apps. These solutions represent an existential threat to the open web, and therefore Google.

I really hope Google doesn't just stop at app ads, and starts punishing websites that do objectively horrible things to end-user experience.

dssddsds• 11 years ago

Isn't this a tiny bit concerning that one company can effectively force the web to comply with their standards by "punishing" any non-conformers? I know Bing exists, but still, this is something that would happen in a monopoly.

exodust7• 11 years ago

When 100% of people find those intrusive pop-ups annoying, the "standard" then is not so much belonging to Google, but shared by all.

ksec• 11 years ago

May be only me, I dont really find those annoying, in fact i find them helpful when they tell me my favorite site has an App and I dont need to use Mobile Browser to Read.

exodust7• 11 years ago

There are better ways to tell you about the app that don't annoy 99% of people.

werber• 11 years ago

Is this an announcement for the death of the unknown app, or Google give a big hug to using the browser more?

vacri2• 11 years ago

I misread the title and was hoping that those .gif ads with misleading 'download', 'next', or 'inbox mail' buttons would be penalised. Ah, well...

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I wonder if this is more search defense than it is user experience work. One of the things web driven access gives you is access to the search traffic through that web site, once you go to the App all that traffic goes with it. Its clear that an app for everything is getting pushed hard by content providers.

jane_is_here• 11 years ago

How much longer before Google starts flagging Sourceforge as a malware site ?

JohnTHaller• 11 years ago

SourceForge distributes bundleware offer installers for only a handful of projects (I think 12) that have opted into their Dev Share program.

Interesting Fact: A chunk of Google Chrome's install growth has been courtesy of the exact same type of bundleware offers with Adobe Flash, Java updates, and free antivirus installs/updates.

amolgupta• 11 years ago

what about the companies who dont have a mobile web version? All they have is a page to install app when opened on mobile? Do they show the desktop version or kill that page? eg. Flipkart and Myntra

hobarrera• 11 years ago

Those don't qualify as "mobile app ads" really. Those are actual websites that merely link to a mobile app.

FilterSweep• 11 years ago

So they're still not punishing sites that force redirect your mobile browser to a failed app download page I see. I shouldn't have to worry about my browser unintentionally trying to download the Draftkings app from a sports blog I'm reading.

manigandham5• 11 years ago

Best to read this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/mdudas/status/638792939842469893

This only applies to page covering ads for app installs. Not other interstitials. In fact Google recently did a study showing how 69% of people leave the page when faced with an interstitial [1], yet they also recently released an updated format for their own Google overlay ad [2] (although this is for apps). They don't want to lose web/search traffic to apps, but they make plenty of money running these formats themselves. A good summary of the various conflicts of interest is here [3].

1. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/google-ca...

2. http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/08/beautiful-new-designs-fo...

3. http://searchengineland.com/google-goes-app-interstitial-pro...

YokoZar• 11 years ago

Sorry, but what?

What does an ad that shows between levels of angry birds on your phone have to do with ads blocking you from getting your search result?

This sounds like some weird sort of misdirection attempt.

manigandham5• 11 years ago

Edited for clarity:

Google is claiming to do this to improve user experience, however:

- they do these exact ads on every site they have

- they arent stopping other interstitials so sites can be just as annoying on the first page

- a site with great content should not be penalized for the site's own choices on ads

- they're forcing a change that affects everyone else except them

The PR signal doesnt match the execution. It's a monopolistic move and raises questions about their involvement in so many layers of the ads/web stack.

mattmanser2• 11 years ago

69% of people using YouTube leave when faced with an interstitial.

Different statistic.

illivah• 11 years ago

Dance websites! dance!

andoma• 11 years ago

First i thought the title read "Google Will Soon Start Pushing Mobile Sites That Use Annoying App Install Ads" :)

collyw• 11 years ago

Google is as bad as anyone when I open up stuff in my Ubuntu phone.

iamadatawhore• 11 years ago

bout time.

yoz-y• 11 years ago

Hm, I've rarely seen such pushes for app installs. I've mostly seen banner-like ads. However, I hope they will also start penalising websites that use overlays for mailing list submissions and account creation - before even giving you chance to read the article you came in for.

thespace123• 11 years ago

don't be evil

bibabo• 11 years ago

(I don't like these ads)

1. Apps can't be searched or content linked from Google.com

2. Apps don't show (as much?) Google ads

1 + 2 = Google penalty

Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

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