Google will punish sites that use annoying pop-up ads

https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/23/12610890/google-search-punish-pop-ups-interstitial-ads

by ashitlerferad • 9 years ago

274 117 9 years ago

theverge.com

bcardarella• 9 years ago

This is from over a year ago

tangue• 9 years ago

And considering the state of the web I doubt there was any punishment at all.

reconbot• 9 years ago

I'm not so sure about that. They change up things a lot. Search is only part of the equation however, people can still buy an add to show you anything they like. So these practices aren't going away, they're just pushed into an arbitrage situation.

cpncrunch2• 9 years ago

Google later confirmed that the update went live in Jan:

http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-rolling-mobile-i...

I actually just added a full-screen video popup to a site a few days ago, and I made it so that it won't appear to googlebot. This wasn't for deceptive purposes, just because it wasn't relevant. I only show the video once to users, and it doesn't appear when they go back to the site...it's just a walkthrough of our products, which many people seem to need. I suspect many sites will check for googlebot and not show their popups to avoid this penalty.

jeromegv• 9 years ago

Showing something different to GoogleBot than your users is against terms of service, all good until you get caught.

tyingq6• 9 years ago

Google is very concerned about ads that visually block text content. But somehow forcing ads in front of videos on YouTube isn't the same exact thing?

Both force an ad to be looked at before granting you access to the content you came for. I don't get the distinction.

sokoloff• 9 years ago

Google owns one of them, so there's that distinction...

matt4077• 9 years ago

Have you ever seen the little "x" in the corner of google display ads? If you click it, you're asked for the reason you're objecting to the ad. Among them "ad covers content".

Meaning: you shouldn't always assume the worst, especially if there's evidence against it.

Pxtl• 9 years ago

At least I don't have to play a hidden object adventure game to find the close button for YouTube ads.

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

This is only really because you're already aware of where YouTube's buttons are and how they work. If you visited any given other website often enough, it'd be more or less the same.

theWatcher37• 9 years ago

Does this apply to twitters full-page sign up pop up?

Animats3• 9 years ago

To deal with that, right click on "Inspect element", mouse upwards until the whole popup is selected, and click "Delete Node".

mikewhy• 9 years ago

Not to defend the ad industry, but I don't think these are equivalent. YouTube ads don't block content so much as they delay it, much like inline ads.

The equivalent YouTube ad would be if it started playing and didn't pause the video you're trying to watch.

tyingq6• 9 years ago

Not sure I understand. Both are an overlay blocking content. I suspect Google would still punish an interstitial overlay with a countdown timer that dismissed it. If you don't click, YouTube sometimes makes you watch 30+ seconds of ads.

Here's Google's post about it: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easi...

c3534l• 9 years ago

Why does pausing the video matter? Pausing the video sounds more like blocking content than not.

Sylos• 9 years ago

There's two kinds of on-video ads on YouTube. The ones that you described, which play before or during the video that you're watching, pausing the video, and then the ads that display in a little overlay at the bottom of the video.

I don't see how either of these would be alright by this new pseudo-policy, but your argument most definitely does not apply to the latter kind.

odammit• 9 years ago

I'll take a pop up ad over and inline any day at least I know it's not a part of the content and the close button is usually in the same place-ish.

In line ads always confuse the hell out of me especially now that they are getting so camouflaged into the content and content sites have the scroll to next piece of content functionality.

AJ007• 9 years ago

Here is something that is equivalent, page level ads, which are identical to what Google calls interstitials -https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6245304?hl=en

How will Google punish themselves? Or will Google just punish the publishers who bothered to follow their repeated recommendations to run page level ads on their site?

dlp2112• 9 years ago

It could have to do with the fact that video and text articles are different mediums.

tyingq6• 9 years ago

I'll bite. Visually blocking text vs video. Either requires a click (or long wait) to get to the content. What is different?

In fact, there's often less waiting with overlays on top of text content.

nathcd• 9 years ago

Maybe Google Search is punishing search scores for YouTube videos because of ads, but since most online videos exist only on YouTube, those results generally still rank highly regardless of the penalty?

drawnwren• 9 years ago

I think the difference is the potential for abuse. It's not possible for a YouTube advertiser to make a YouTube ad appear to be a system popup or for it to attempt to take over my browser experience by full screening. Keep in mind, Google has been fine with popup ads until 2017.

woranl2• 9 years ago

Do as I say, not as I do.

woranl2• 9 years ago

I say non-skippable YouTube video ads are more annoying and affect more people. Go punish yourself Google. Pathetic.

synicalx2• 9 years ago

I suppose it's a matter of practicality - with most text heavy sites you can put ads around the text and it works just fine. But with something like Youtube, that approach isn't really going to be as effective because people generally won't be scrolling around the page.

naraniano2• 9 years ago

Like this one I get every now and then across all of their services? http://i.imgur.com/f5NS6GQ.png

ocdtrekkie3• 9 years ago

I wouldn't call that an ad. Nor would I condemn Google occasionally reminding users to check their privacy settings. In fact, I encourage it.

cm21872• 9 years ago

That's not google reminding you of privacy settings (in fact if you want to change those this menu is highly impractical with a lot of nesting). This is google making you agree with their T&C to go any further.

cm21872• 9 years ago

Particularly when you flush cookies and data on the browser session closing

aibara• 9 years ago

Or this one for search: https://imgur.com/a/gwrjX

strange_quark• 9 years ago

Or this infuriating one that hijacks page scroll so it's almost impossible to get to the mobile site: http://imgur.com/a/tNVoP

ccleary00• 9 years ago

If they can punish those Sumo Me fullscreen popups that ask for your email everytime you're 2 seconds into the page, that would be great.

newusertoday• 9 years ago

Any idea what would happen to chat boxes that pop up on companies websites? they don't block the content and are there to interact with customers (think olark). Does anyone know if that would lead to lower search ranking as well?

zo1• 9 years ago

Not as bad as Google punishing sites that host conservative/controversial authors and viewpoints:

http://www.thelibertyconservative.com/google-issues-ultimatu...

kutkloon7• 9 years ago

While I hate ads, I also think google has way too much power already, and this is not a healthy development.

Animats3• 9 years ago

Does this mean they'll get rid of their own popup ad:

   Get to Google faster. 
   Switch your default search engine to Google. 
   Yes, show me.

There's not even a "No" option.

(Google is my default search engine. I just have their tracking blocked, so they can't check this. Lame.)

Crontab• 9 years ago

I am glad to see I am not the only one who gets this. I use IE at work and it is annoying.

I have also noticed that Google's Captcha is more annoying than it is on Chrome.

CamelCaseName• 9 years ago

I hope this is not too off-topic, but what features are we missing out on in Chrome that are present in IE?

rhizome3• 9 years ago

Watch live TV with YouTube Red.

ceejayoz3• 9 years ago

Yeah, that one's obnoxious. "Not now" - so it just comes back up in a day or two.

Dylan168072• 9 years ago

Wait, youtube red or youtube tv? Because one of those is a lot more expensive than the other.

godzillabrennus• 9 years ago

DuckDuckGo has gotten so much better.

I didn't think it was possible but I switched and I don't miss Google 99% of the time.

The biggest exception I've found is that the maps from open street map don't have street view.

Piskvorrr• 9 years ago

There's Mapillary and OpenStreetCam, but the coverage is far smaller than Google's (what with its virtually unlimited budget).

girishso• 9 years ago

Will they also punish those websites with "activate notifications" pop ups?

I'm so tired of those and there seems no way of blocking, even after blocking notifications in Chrome settings.

Larrikin• 9 years ago

Firefox let's you permanently block a site from asking for the notification permission

ceejayoz3• 9 years ago

I've seen a number of sites prompting via a modal that isn't the browser's built-in functionality. If you say no, it just prompts again in a day or two. If you say yes, then you get the built-in (blockable) "enable notifications?" prompt.

saosebastiao• 9 years ago

This is good. Also, can they punish sites that download 50MB of bullshit before showing a word on the page?

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

They do that with amp.

Karunamon3• 9 years ago

And people scream about it, even though it’s an unambiguously better experience for the user .

chinathrow• 9 years ago

That is laughable. They push full screen pop-up ads within AdSense itself...

amelius• 9 years ago

Is this true? Afaik I've never seen full screen Google ads (or perhaps I have, but just didn't identify them as such).

robtaylor2• 9 years ago

They do and have said it would be a negative ranking factor.

So yes, one google product can result in a penalty with another. You will probably make a few quid more on adsense though.

robtaylor2• 9 years ago

This was something from January (2017) and trailed in 2016.

It also covers the adsense product - so using google product can affect your google rank.

HOWEVER there are many many news websites that have not been penalised despite a full range of pop ups, interstitial and screen take over adverts.

Anyone from Google able to explain why there is such a discrepancy?

smegel2• 9 years ago

Coming weeks after headless Chrome is released, wonder if there is a connection.

borplk2• 9 years ago

Not sure what you mean. Google using Chrome headless for crawling? I'm sure their crawling infrastructure was already more than capable.

smegel2• 9 years ago

How else would they detect popups?

DerfNet• 9 years ago

I work for an e-commerce company. This absolutely brutalized our sales until we made significant changes to our layout.

I understand that this instance is seen as a net positive for the end user, but Google should not have the power to force websites to conform to whatever Google decides is the new standard, or become irrelevant.

The end user should be deciding what is and isn't worthwhile content, or where to shop, or what have you. Not Google.

mythrwy• 9 years ago

Not you either.

If people come in through Google because they are searching for something and instead of arriving at the content that was advertised in search results, see a content covering popup, that's not really informed decision making. I think Google has legitimate right to rank sites that do this lower.

weirdstuff• 9 years ago

That's more ok for a smaller outfit, but now that Google is abusing their monopolistic market position it's not as ok.

Not to worry, the days of the U.S. government busting up monopolies seem behind us.

vm• 9 years ago

What kind of ecommerce company? I do a lot of work in the sector.

Your business is dependent on Google for traffic. You can embrace it and be beholden to platform rules, or you can build a direct audience and brand. The latter is hard but more defensible and there are many case studies to follow of other companies doing this.

golergka• 9 years ago

As a user, I am deciding to use Google exactly because of features like this and, for example, amp.

criddell• 9 years ago

Why were you using popups? Don't they annoy you when you are browsing?

dredmorbius3• 9 years ago

Performing as intended.

loco5niner• 9 years ago

Well, I'm more likely to use Google because of features like this...

siliconc0w• 9 years ago

This is great. Ideally you look at the % of the page with actual content and % of the page with 'everything else' and sort by % content. Hopefully, this would motivate sites to compete with one another for cleaner UX.

z3t4• 9 years ago

I wonder how they detect if something is annoying.

QAPereo2• 9 years ago

It doesn't matter, ad blocking is here to stay and expand, and it's a ticking clock on this nonsense. How many HN users ever see an ad at this point?

zeep2• 9 years ago

If some people get it their way and the web becomes like a binary blob, it might become harder to block ads across the board.

QAPereo2• 9 years ago

That is a terrifying proposition, but it might also be the required impetus for an alternative to the web actually taking off, and eventually, over.

shp0ngle• 9 years ago

Can they please also punish sites that cover whole page with that stupid cookie warning, thanks.

jacquesm• 9 years ago

The legally required one?

jiggunjer2• 9 years ago

...that wouldn't even be necessary if they didn't try to mine the marrow out of you.

cassowary• 9 years ago

Could they just get around the requirement by using the HTML5 storage stuff? It's such a silly legal requirement. There's significant privacy concerns. And they make me close this silly message that has nothing to do with privacy at all.

zeep2• 9 years ago

How can sites punish Google? I guess they could switch to non-popup ads that aren't powered by Google...

kindawinda• 9 years ago

i dont know why they always says this and never fulfill. search 'free porn' and youll see pornhub.com and xnxx.com and they have popups but never get deranked.

ceejayoz3• 9 years ago

They may well be penalizing those sites, but in the porn world, everyone's using those sorts of abusive ads, and being equally bumped down in rank.

imgabe• 9 years ago

How about the sites with the obnoxious "sign up for our newsletter" pop over?

kazinator• 9 years ago

Google will take a shot at a 1990's problem that desktop browsers have done away so long ago, that people hardly remember?

This seems rather analogous to digging up a corpse to give it a spiteful kick in the ribs and bury it again.

Given all the SEO spam in the Google search index, it is a misplaced priority to make a target out of sites with popups.

dredmorbius3• 9 years ago

2016 story FYI.

Google will punish sites that use annoying pop-up ads

Related Stories