Whether you want to generate new Likes on your Facebook page or you want to attract new newsletter subscribers: Popups are a great way to capture the attention of users and to achieve some success. It is on many websites now quite normal that either a popup pushes immediately or after a certain time on the screen and is invited in to a particular action. Whether that is user friendly, remains to be seen, but it works perfectly and precisely in newsletters, the conversion rate is very high. But at Google, where they always attach great importance to the user experience, they would now probably put an end to.

Anyone who uses on his website popups that lie beyond the actual content (so-called interstitials), has from January 2017 expect to be penalized by Google. This change in the algorithm is implemented according to statements by Google on 10 January 2017 and will from that date assess the sites that use popups, lower.

The reason Google indicates that the interstitials serious negative effect especially in the mobile sector is the user experience. And Google take care of “mobile friendly” sites, which of course is a logical step. we once thought from user point of view, this is certainly a good decision. Because we ourselves are indeed occasionally annoyed by these overlays. From a marketing perspective, it is, however, less positive.

As always, we must also see how severe the punishment will be. And when large popups actually no longer go, there is still the opportunity to work with smaller, which does not cover the content quite as extensive.