The 2017 Mobile Update: How Interstitials Impact User Experience

The new year is literally right around the corner and based on a post on Google Webmaster Central Blog on "interstitial" pop-ups these interactions on mobile will either help or hurt your mobile rankings come January.

It’s about what users want: to easily see your content

It’s a well-known fact in the SEO community that Google does not make it a habit of disclosing if and when its algorithm updates are currently running or will be released. But, when it comes to mobile, the search engine giant has been rather forthcoming about making sure the majority of websites are at least “mobile friendly.” This is largely due to the fact that over half of Google’s traffic can be traced back to searches originating from a mobile device. In April 2016, Google further encouraged webmasters to hop on the mobile bandwagon by giving a ranking boost to domains whose pages were mobile friendly.

Fast forward to four months later, when “85% of all pages in the mobile search results now meet this [mobile friendly] criteria and show the mobile-friendly label” the label itself is being removed, although the criteria will remain in effect as part of the ranking signal. 

Now that a majority of websites are in fact mobile friendly, you might be wondering, “what’s the next improvement Google will be looking to target?” The answer is: user experience. Specifically, how easily users are able to access the content of your domain on a mobile device. 

Although Google will remain largely vague about what does or does not constitute a penalty, much like Jeremy Renner’s character in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation where his canned response to nearly every question was: “I can neither confirm nor deny details of any operation without the Secretary's approval.” There are times when Google does at least provide guidelines. This is one of those times: 

“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.” – Google Webmasters Blog – August 2016

You mean Google is telling us what they want?

(Essentially) Yes! We’re actually getting preemptive information about how interstitials are being perceived by users that can help webmasters evaluate and improve the user experience. This is much bigger than ads and pop-ups blocking content—because it’s largely about the responsible use of “interstitials” which is essentially any kind of pop-up or overlay that momentarily keeps the user from reading the page content.

It’s time to begin testing and evaluating how your domain is currently serving interstitials to mobile users. Which means, you can avoid a loss in mobile rankings if you prioritize the user experience and their interest in your content.

Google’s helpful and hurtful interstitial techniques

The following are examples of techniques that make content less accessible to a user:

• Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.
• Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
• Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.

Conversely, the following are techniques that, used responsibly, would not be affected by the new signal: 

• Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.
• Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.
• Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissed. For example, the app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.

The article on the Webmaster Central blog contains helpful illustrations that further illustrate what techniques are deemed helpful or hurtful to how users interact with your mobile content. It’s important to note that interstitials are not directly related to ads potentially blocking content, but could also be considered prompts for newsletter sign-ups or special discount offers you may be serving up to mobile visitors. The point is, this is the time to begin testing and evaluating whether or not your interstitials behave in a way that is in compliance with how users consume content on mobile or whether its potentially hindering the initial experience of users accessing a page of your domain on a mobile device.  

Ready to test? Consider the following questions and data points  

• Qualitative evaluations: Review the examples in the Webmaster blog post against your domain’s interstitials to determine how the current implementation on your domain could be perceived.
• Ask yourself, “Is the current implementation more likely to help inform my users of something useful to them or is it inhibiting them from quickly consuming the content on the page?”
• Ask yourself, “How are users currently engaging with the interstitial? Is it converting (i.e. collecting an email address) or is the primary interaction users are having to “X-out” or close out of the pop-up?”   
• Quantitative evaluations: Set up A/B tests on mobile traffic with and without the current interstitials to evaluate performance against a few data points.
• Does the page bounce rate improve when the interstitial is removed?
• Are mobile users visiting more pages without an interstitial present?
• Design 1-2 alternatives of the interstitial to determine if another design is less intrusive for users. 

Remember, search query intent is still a strong signal coupled with the page being mobile friendly. You wouldn’t want to risk losing rankings on mobile because you put your own agenda before the user’s intent. Consider how your interstitials are served and that they’re not actively intrusive to your users inhibiting them from reading your content. Do this effectively and you’ll keep your top mobile pages in the clear of losing rankings for the user experience mobile update that’s on the horizon for 2017.