Have you ever noticed that when you are searching something on Google and when you click the link and navigate to the page that sometimes a bunch of pop ups come up and interrupt your main page or in the midst of while you are looking through the page. I don’t know about you, but I find this very bothersome and annoying. I also find there are pop ups or what the tech savvy people are calling it interstitials; that come up and you have to press dismiss in order for them to disappear. It may only take a second to click and dismiss the page, but it is inconvenient, especially when they continuously pop-up.
So Google has decided to take matters in their owns hands. Google is reaching out against certain kinds of pop-ups on mobile devices and will start punishing websites that misuse their users with obtrusive advertising. At the end of the day what they want is to help users easily access content on their cellular devices. Google wants to maintain a great experience for users on the web. The last thing they want to do is ruin the user experience and lose user activity from a certain webpage. How is that fair? But Google wants to enforce that not all pop ups are bad. For example if it is to inform a user for legal matters like verifying age.
We know nowadays that young users are browsing the web and are becoming in tune with technology at a young age. So verifying if they are 18 plus is important. Just like when you are going to the movies, going to a nightclub or restaurant; age verification is very important. Another significant example is interstitials that take up a reasonable amount of screen space. Therefore, they are making them easily removable or not in the way. In my eyes I see this as a kind of war on the web. Google is trying to attack the pop-ups and protect its users.
I find this very interesting and proactive. I wonder if this will change how Facebook, Pinterest, and companies have pop ups. They pretty much make you sign in or create a new account. I understand that login dialog is the standard, but Facebook and Pinterest pages are popular creating a sort of conflict in my opinion. I also wonder if they will eventually include this on desktop and laptop searches. I know in terms of watching movies online that a lot of the time so many pop-ups come up spamming the page.