google penalty - Express Writers

Google Launches The Intrusive Interstitials Mobile Penalty This January: What It Means for Content Creators

June 19, 2024January 23, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Ask just about any mobile user, and the answer will probably be the same. We could all do without those intrusive pop-ups that block content and ask us to click one of two choices that go a lot like, “Yes, I want to know more about…”, or “No, I don’t like free stuff.” And more recently developed in the marketing sphere, what about the pop-ups out there now that downright insult our intelligence, revenue and status? This screenshot of ad opt-out choices was pulled from a leading content marketer’s site: Sucky, that last choice! Back to the main point of pop-up ads as a whole. Overall, the truth is, no one likes to be interrupted. Most of us are taught from very early on to say “excuse me”, or at least wait our turn before speaking. So, why is it okay for us to be interrupted when we visit a mobile site? Turns out, it is NOT okay anymore. In mid-January, Google launched the intrusive interstitial-killing algorithm update, and it is going to have an impact on content marketing efforts and our attempts to reach our audience with relevant content. Read on for all the details. Intrusive Interstitials 101 Intrusive interstitials are a fancy way to describe pop-up ads, those page-covering, content-blocking images on mobile and desktop sites. These ads can be almost as annoying as a line-cutter on Black Friday (no one likes them). Intrusive interstitials block the intended destination, forcing Google searchers to go through a process before proceeding. Interstitials can cover an entire page, making it especially frustrating for mobile users. The poor experience can make content less accessible to a site visitors by: Covering a page with a popup Displaying an interstitial that must be dismissed before proceeding Delaying the show of content a user was originally trying to access Thanks to Google’s new algorithm, webpages where content is not easily accessible may now not rank as high. Google is currently only looking at those popup ads that appear when a user initially arrives at a mobile website; as announced during a Google+ hangout, the goal is to look for interstitials that show up between the time when a user searches and sees the intended content. The Good, the Bad, the Popups: What Won’t Be Penalized vs. What Will So, what does this mean for content creators? To put it simply, if it’s annoying, bothersome, or frustrating, it risks being de-ranked. This change may not impact those popups that are for more helpful purposes, like in the case of a live chat box. Here are examples-in-action to demonstrate the good vs. bad. The Good, Non-Penalized Pop-Ups: Defining & Example Obviously, having a user-friendly mobile site right from the beginning is the first step in appealing to the growing population of mobile-only web visitors (our EW team learned about this way back in November when they traveled to New York for the SEJ Summit). These types of pop-ups are permissible and will NOT be penalized: Banners that are easily dismissible and use up a reasonable amount of screen space. While what is “reasonable” may be open to interpretation, Search Engine Journal recommends keeping it at 15% or less. Interstitials that are used for legal reasons, like age verification. In cases where an interstitial is in place for ethical or legal reasons, no penalty will be dealt. Login dialogs on sites not publicly indexable, like in the case of email and other private sites. Here’s an example of a GOOD, effective ad we’re doing for our Content Shop. It’s a tiny banner at the top, meets the 15% or less rule (“Start your New Year with great content! On any of our services, check out with an instant 5% savings with code five 2017″), doesn’t block significant content on mobile (we tested, it works), and offers a code that customers can simply checkout with–no additional clicking, email signup, etc. needed. It works, too: 100% of the inbound leads that don’t need a sales call have been using it. The Bad Pop-up Examples We did turn off our live chat popups that blocked content on the lower-right hand corner of our site (no example to show: it’s gone). Irrelevant and uninteresting content that is preceded by intrusive pop-ups is a recipe for low conversion rates, not to mention those Google ghosts lurking around the corner. Never do the following types of ads with an opt-out phrase that insults intelligence or status. Just don’t. We love you Neil, but really? How do you know we don’t like our traffic stats as they sit? Are you some omnipotent presence instead of a mere marketer? Dear lord how insulting. No, I’d prefer my prospects convert today, thank you very much, and luckily for me, not you, they are. 😛 And last but my top favorite…a pop-up from MarketingProfs suggesting we read an article called “Your Pop-Up Ads are Annoying Your Prospects.” It’s so ironic, it’s funny. 😀 😀 3 Types of Intrusive Interstitials that Will Be Penalized Three interstitial types are currently at risk for being penalized by Google. Knowledge is power: 1. Regular Popups These windows block the content of a page and often dim everything else on the screen. They often look like this: 2. Full-screen interstitials Full-screen ads often stand alone and sit above the header of the website, forcing the user to scroll before viewing the intended content. 3. Standalone interstitials These full screens block all content with no opportunity for content preview. Remember, anything that covers over 15% of the page content, as an ad, is at risk of being penalized. While Google continues to focus on the user, the company also recognizes that corrections need to be made every so often in order to improve how sites perform. This includes smacking down on mobile pop-up ads and other algorithmic changes geared toward providing an optimal web experience. Are Pop-Up Ads Worth It? Pop-ups work, but only if you do them right. Companies continue to include them on sites because they have the potential to provide a certain level of effectiveness. Unless, of course, they shove their way in like … Read more

The Basics Of How to Fix Any Google Penalty

August 25, 2022August 31, 2015 by Adam Oakley

It’s not surprising if you’ve encountered a Google penalty at some point, if you’re a website owner. Google only represents the most popular search engine in the world today. On average, over 1.17 billion unique searchers use Google to find what they’re looking for on the net. And recently, Google has realized the need for streamlining the results it gives to users. This new user-centric program deals with helping users get more relevant results out of their search. In order to do this, Google has started inspecting the things that make up a website and comparing them to what it considers a useful website. Understanding Google Penalties: How To Fix Any Google Penalty In keeping with the model that Google is aiming to perfect regarding relevancy of search results, a set of guidelines were given to webmasters for them to understand what Google looks for in order to rank a site well. How Do They Happen? Penalties occur when a webmaster ignores one or more of these guidelines, either willfully or inadvertently. If your site is hit with a penalty, it becomes quite obvious when you look at your recent web traffic. At one point you’ll see your web traffic decline. What Makes Them Really Bad? If the decline is significant enough then you may have a really big problem. This can put a damper on your lead generation and significantly curtail it. 57% of B2B marketers state that search results make up a majority of their leads, so you can see how damaging a penalty is to a site or domain. The thing is, the penalties are supposed to be damaging. They’re aimed at managing and preventing abuse of resources while at the same time trying to keep website owners honest in their dealings with searchers. They try to balance searches to deliver the most relevant results but in order to do so they might hit sites that might be perfectly above board, except that they break one or two rules that Google has said delineates a site as good. It’s a matter of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it’s true, but until there’s a better, more efficient algorithm, it’s a chance the search engine giant is willing to take. Major Signs You Got Penalized One of the key things you need to understand before we go any further is this: just because you had a decrease in traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you were hit by a penalty. Many webmasters give in to their confirmation bias and jump to conclusions about their site being hit by Google for not conforming on some little detail when it really wasn’t Google’s fault at all that the numbers were just bad for one particular week due to some obscure technical detail such as: issues with crawling poor redirects issues with the server bad robots.txt configuration blocking access These are a few of the more common reasons why a site’s traffic may be affected through non-Google means. Decrease in traffic is one of the ways you can tell that your site MAY have been hit with a penalty. Other telltale signs of a penalty occurring may be: traffic drops on individual pages or regarding specific keywords A significant number of your pages get de-indexed Your entire site becomes de-indexed There is no surefire way to tell if you’ve been hit with a penalty just from looking at your traffic. That’s why, to ensure that you’re dealing with a penalty, you need to employ other means. Looking At Algorithmic & Manual Penalties In the penalties category, Google can hit you with one of two types of penalties. Manual penalties are usually given if your site obviously operating as though it’s a suspicious site. They can curtail quite a lot of your traffic. Most webmasters won’t ever get hit with one of these, unless they’re knowingly doing something underhanded and get caught by Google. Algorithmic penalties come from algorithm updates. As Google upgrades its algorithm from version to version, some users get hit with a penalty if they don’t conform to what Google expects to see when it runs its algorithm on the site. Algorithmic penalties are much harder to find than manual penalties, and usually requires you to do a bit of digging. Detecting Penalties If you assume you have a penalty of some sort, the simplest method to figure out if it’s true is to log in to Google Search Console (which was formerly Webmaster Tools). Once there you can unroll your messages to see if Google detected something untoward about your website. Alternatively you can check the Search Traffic Heading under Manual Actions and you will see if you were hit with a manual penalty. Algorithmic penalties are a bit harder to put your finger on. There’s no flagged message or heads-up in any console screen that tells you that you’ve been penalized by the algorithm. One of the more effective methods of testing to see if your site was hit by an algorithmic penalty is to determine when your traffic dropped and manually determine if any important Google update occurred on or near that date to mess with your traffic. The Panguin Tool is an automatic method of doing that that saves you time in the long run. It is also important to remember that this is not a 100% effective method of determining if you’ve been hit by an algorithmic penalty, but only serves as a rough guideline. Understanding the 5 Major Google Penalties There are quite a large range of penalties that Google can possibly hit you with. These include, but are not limited to penalties that deal with spam, weak content, backlinks and a hundred other small algorithmic updates that can affect your traffic to varying amounts. The most common penalties you’re going to encounter can be classified into a few major categories such as: 1. Unnatural links: Unnatural links come in one of two flavors: Links To your Site: These links originate outside of … Read more