Google targets intrusive interstitials in changes to mobile search rankings
Google is set to target publishers’ use of intrusive interstitial ads from January 2017, with pages where content is obscured by an interstitial set to be punished in the mobile search rankings.
The changes, announced in a Google blog this week, will see the “mobile-friendly” label on searches removed after the search engine giant found that 85% of all pages in the mobile search results now meet Google’s mobile search criteria.
“To keep search results uncluttered, we’ll be removing the label, although the mobile-friendly criteria will continue to be a ranking signal,” Google’s blog reads.
What about waiting for a page to load on SMH because they have a video (that I do not want to watch) rendering…
As ever with any changes to Googles algo: makes total sense and works for the user = win!
How about the ‘intrusive’ paid search ads Google puts at the top of their Search Engine Results Pages? This just sounds like a way of punishing publishers for generating revenue off their own platforms, and not Google’s…
I just don’t think this is a decision Google should be making for the publisher. Although I detest popups, sidebars, expandables and everything else thrown at us, those decision, whether it is right or wrong for the user, should be left to the publisher. Google should just focus on indexing and let the publisher worry about their users. If Google care so much for the user, stop with the pre-rolls and those stupid popup banners on YouTube.
Are you mad? That’s like saying it is perfectly fine for a council to allow a road bridge to stay open when halfway over the river the traffic drops into the river, because it fell away the week before?
Google has every right to look after it’s users and to protect their time and their bandwith against greedy publishers. Google must ensure that they are controlling their traffic so that the user can get around with a smile on their face.
Publishers need to realise that the ad model alone is dead. They can’t make money purely from selling ad’s. Publishers that get creative, put the user first and are extremely engaging and useful will win.
Quite possibly I am mad. Maybe a little slow as I don’t get your analogy between government controlled infrastructure and a publisher Google do not own, yet want to control. I am simply saying, publishers should be free to choose how they want to run their businesses and manage that balance between annoying its users and the revenue generated from that. BTW, those ads employ an industry and our ‘greedy’ Aussie publishers pay their fair share in tax to hopefully fix that bridge!
With all due respect Spiro you sound like you are still living in the 1990’s? It’s 2016 and the user rules. No longer are we restricted to just a print model where the first 5 pages of say a magazine, are full page ad’s or DPS’s. We didn’t have a choice as ‘users’ back then, we had to flick through the ad’s and publishers knew it and abused it.
I will explain my bridge analogy for you:
Pretend Google’s search engine is a motorway. It is a motorway with loads of turn offs along the way that lead you to destinations. If a sign post said ‘Ocean Beach’, however when you turned off you actually had to drive through a heap of drive thru kiosks, which slowed you down and even if the products were relevant, you were not in shop[ping mode, because you want to go to the beach… Well over time you would avoid that turn off, favouring the Ocean Beach turn off that took you quickly and immediately to; Ocean Beach!
My point is that so many, (and it is typically the traditional, old school publishers trying to make a buck online), are not giving the user what they want, quickly.
I will say it again: a publishing model in 2016, which is dependent on purely making money from ad’s, isn’t going to cut it much longer. Take Mumbrella as an example. It engages a niche b2b audience, however does not make it’s bulk revenues from selling ad’s. It services the community, it gets involved with the community, it lives and breaths the community. Awards, learning, seminars, workshop, ad’s – it is a multiple revenue stream strategy. If based purely on ad’s Mumbrella wouldn’t be profitable.
Users are fussy, they want things yesterday and they do not like clicking through to something, which is obscured by a time wasting video, advert, survey (enter more annoying things here). It’s 2016; invent or die.
I think you are losing sight of the point. I am not endorsing these ads, I do not like these ads either. I am, however, questioning what right Google has to take away the commercial freedom for these publishers to manage their ad models. Choice is a wonderful thing. Users have the choice to simply avoid these publications if they find the ads too bothersome.
BTW, almost all old skool (that’s how we wrote it back in the 90’s) have multiple revenue streams including events. City2Surf, you must say, is an extremely popular event and is owned by Fairfax – which actually takes you to the Ocean Beach.
“I am, however, questioning what right Google has to take away the commercial freedom for these publishers to manage their ad models. Choice is a wonderful thing. Users have the choice to simply avoid these publications if they find the ads too bothersome.”
– This is what Google is great at though. It is, in part, being a publisher and a decent one at that. Sales teams and editorial teams would often be at war within a publishing house; profits v integrity. Google must serve up decent, integral results, otherwise we will all fck off to Yahoo, Bong, or duck duck go. Modern day publishers are being shackled by the bean counters and often the profit is put before the user = poor publishing, so Google is having a say. Google has every right to have a say, it has billions of users and if they start serving up rubbish the users will go elsewhere. I disagree with you; Google has every right to police the quality of it’s search results.
I love the City2Surf analogy and it certainly does take you to the ocean beach (well Bondi). They need to do more of this and get products under their ownership too, to survive. Ultimately, amazing news might be at a loss, however flogging events and products, will make them wedge = they make money. Perhaps?