Google to downgrade ranking of mobile sites with intrusive pop-up ads
From January 10, 2017 Google will begin penalising mobile websites that use pop-ups and "intrusive interstitials" by downgrading their ranking on the search engine.

Watch this: Mobile web to annoy us less thanks to Google 01:33



Who doesn't enjoy a good pop-up ad? Everyone, that's who. Now Google is trying to be the ultimate bro, announcing on Tuesday that it'll soon be punishing mobile sites with obstructive advertisements.

"Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible," product manager Doantam Phan wrote in a blog post. "This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller.

"To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly."

Pop-up ads that cover the "main content" of a page and ads that require you to close them before you can access the content of a page are what Google qualifies as being unnecessarily obstructive.

The announcement also included news that Google would be removing the mobile-friendly label on search results, due to the overwhelming majority of results now meeting "mobile-friendly" criteria.