Google has announced that they will start penalizing pages with intrusive popups, commonly known as “ads”, starting in 2017.
“Pages that display intrusive popups provide a poorer experience for users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices, where the screens are often smaller. To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where the content is not easily accessible to a user from a search, will not receive a good ranking ”.
This will be implemented as part of the search engine's continued push for mobile accessibility. Two years ago, Google added a “ mobile-friendly Results for sites where users did not zoom in to read the content. After finding that 85% of all pages in mobile search results are now ' friendly »For mobiles, the label will be removed. In April 2015, Google updated its algorithm to include mobile usability as a ranking criterion.
However, not all popups will be penalized. Google has identified three types that it considers intrusive:
popups that cover the main content after the user accesses a page through the search results (either immediately or while the user is browsing the page),
stand-alone popups that must be closed before accessing the content,
and using a template in which the popups mimic the folded content, then the original content has been masked under the fold.
Although these examples seem to encompass almost all popups, Google will make a few exceptions for popups that handle legal obligations, such as the use of cookies or age verification, login dialogs for pages that are not not indexed, and the "popups Which make reasonable use of screen space and can easily be closed.
Google didn't specify a size that would be acceptable for popups but did identify one type of popup that would be acceptable, these are the ones used by Safari and Chrome, which use a reasonable amount of space.
The WordPress Plugin Directory has over 1000 plugins that allow users to create and manage their own popup ads, listings Newsletter , a common use of popups that are not exempt from any penalty from Google.
Those using WordPress plugins to display popups, whether for coupons, subscription offers, promotions, or any other form of advertising, will need to carefully consider Google's size guidelines or consider a different approach to achieve them visiteurs.
What to do in this case?
The simplest solution, for the moment, would be to change the announcement process. For all those who use popups, they can also use notification bars. I will offer you some plugins to display notification bars on WordPress.
1 - WPTopBar
Here's a very WordPress Plugin free that will allow you to create rotating notification bars. They will appear above your page, and are customizable. This plugin is currently used by nearly 4000 WordPress sites, and has several options.
2 - YITH Topbar Countdown
Do you like to offer promotions that are limited in time? If so, then you will like this plugin which allows you to display a notification bar with a countdown timer on your site. It's a pretty user-friendly way to display advertisements.
3 - TopBar
Here is a plugin that wants to be rather simple. It lets you display notification bars with call-to-action buttons. You can therefore easily invite your visiteurs to discover a new product, or to subscribe to your newsletter.
That's it for this plugin list. Do you have free plugins that you use for notification bars? Do not hesitate to share them.
