Google (with their shiny new logo) have cracked down on sites that load up a full screen ad to tell you to use their app instead.
THANK YOU, GOOGLE.
I often visit Bleacher Report for football news and the full page app ad is one of the most frustrating user experience points I’ve come across. Seriously, I’m on a browser so let me use the browser.
How are they cracking down? Well, like this, according to a report in The Guardian:
Google will begin to downgrade search results for websites that show an interstital advert for their mobile app from 1 November, as part of its ongoing effort to promote “mobile-friendly” sites on its web search.
The new policy means that websites that show mobile users a whole-page advert for an app before they can use the site itself will be penalised in their search ranking. Sites that use an app install banner across the top of the page will continue to be classed as mobile-friendly under the new rules.
Google argued that a full-page advert is “not a good search experience” for users. In a blogpost, Daniel Bathgate, a software engineer for Google Search, wrote: “Sometimes a user may tap on a search result on a mobile device and see an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content and prompts the user to install an app.
“Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the web page.”
The downgrading will only affect searches made by mobile devices, and it is part of the company’s ongoing attempt to promote “mobile-friendly” websites in search results.
Does your site pop up with a full screen app ad? If so, I’d suggest you disable it sooner rather than later.
