Stop the Pop Widely reported last year, Google’s move to demote websites with “intrusive interstitials” is in effect as of this week.
I’m still fascinated by the implication Google knows what the content of the interstitial is. To wit, cookie notices and age verifications are okay, “blocking” ads are not. There’s also some weighting for how much screen real estate the interstitial takes up, too. Remember the days when Google couldn’t even parse JavaScript? We’ve come a long way since then.
Worth keeping an eye on. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this penalty applied to desktop sites at some point down the road. As goes mobile, so typically goes the broader web.