Certainly! Here is the revised version of the article with URLs removed:
Recently, an SEO client of mine experienced a significant drop in their homepage’s desktop organic traffic, losing 82% in just one month. Unfortunately, this was followed by an additional 97% reduction in the second month.
Why did this happen? The client decided to implement a pop-up for both mobile and desktop users in the United States, going against my recommendations. They hoped the conversions from the pop-up would compensate for the decrease in organic traffic.
Here is an analysis of the intrusive interstitial and the resulting impact on organic traffic.
The Impact of Before and After an Interstitial on Mobile and Desktop
The homepage pop-up was designed for a promotion and was not triggered by time delay or scroll.
Here’s an illustration of a badly executed mobile pop-up:
In the example shown, the pop-up adversely affected the responsive design.
Below is how it appeared on desktop:
Alongside the drop in organic traffic, the homepage also saw a 97% loss in its desktop keyword rankings.
And there was a 96% decline in mobile rankings for the homepage.
Most of the negative impact was on branded terms, which indirectly affected the reduction in PPC branded spend. It also harmed the page experience and page speed. The website’s speed declined by ten seconds. Before the pop-up launch, the site had an average load time of 3 seconds.
After the launch, the load time increased to 13 seconds.
You can observe the negative influence on page experience with numerous layout shifts due to the pop-up.
Overall, the homepage experienced a 97% fall in the value of its organic traffic cost.
There Is No Interstitial Penalty or Manual Action
The effects of an intrusive interstitial primarily affect rankings, not indexing. However, other issues may arise, such as soft 404 errors, server speed, and the site’s overall page experience.
It’s important to note that Google crawls from the U.S., so if overlays are only shown in European countries, Google may not detect them.
The Negative Impact of Interstitials Is a Demotion in Search
When Google launched the mobile interstitial penalty on January 10, 2017, it caused a surprisingly minimal initial impact. But a few days later, SEO professionals started noticing pages dropping ten or more positions in rankings. In February 2022, when the Google page experience update reached desktop sites, intrusive interstitials were included as a signal.
It’s crucial to understand that interstitials don’t require manual action (at least not yet), but they still negatively affect your page experience. Google’s John Mueller explained in a SEO Office Hours session on January 22, 2021:
"This is kind of like something where we would slightly demote the website in search. Sometimes, the tricky part is these slight demotions. It’s not that we’ll remove the site from search or move it to page 100. But if it’s relevant content, we may still show it on the first page of the search results, just not as highly as possible."
4 Examples of Bad Interstitials
- Checking to See if You’re a Spammy Bot Is Bad
Google’s Gary Illyes mentioned there are better alternatives to interstitials that check if a connection is secure.
If you identify a bot, Mueller recommended serving a 5xx status code to handle robot detection interstitials.
- Redirect to Interstitial Page
Redirecting users from page A in the SERPs to page B containing a pop-up or interstitial prevents search engines from detecting content outside the redirected page.
- Only Displays Interstitial
This is an example of a pop-up completely covering the body’s content.
- Store Locator Pop-Ups
Store locators can be hit or miss in pop-up execution. A preferable alternative is to use a banner ad or similar method.
4 Examples of Good Interstitials
- Displaying a Cookies Policy Interstitial
Legal interstitials are acceptable as long as search engines can access content without extra steps beyond clicking something to view background content. GDPR and cookie policies fall under this category.
- Requesting Age Verification
Age verification pop-ups are considered legal and face no issues. An example done well is shown.
- Leveraging Banners at the Top and Bottom
Companies like Samsung use simple ad banners at the top or bottom to convey promotions effectively.
- Exit Intent Pop-Ups Based on Time or Scroll
It’s advisable to use exit intent pop-ups that trigger from time on the page (20 seconds or more) or scroll depth.
Stay Tuned for More Updates on the Recovery of the Interstitial Pop-Up
I plan to update this article as more data becomes available regarding the impact of removing interstitials and the subsequent recovery.
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