Google Has Started Penalizing Mobile Websites with Intrusive Pop-Up Ads

Most users hate these pop-ups and cheer this move from Google. But let me add a little context to why these ads are so prevalent and why some companies view this move as Google abusing their power.

If you visit to any "guide" website like TripAdviser, Yelp, etc, these days on a mobile browser, you'll notice that the sites often barely let you do anything without downloading the native app. They all but refuse to let you see content and throw up "Download our app!" pop-ups everywhere.

By traditional logic, that seems insane. Why are they putting so many roadblocks between the user and the content? Surely that must be driving away users, right?

The reason for this behavior is that Google is systematically destroying the SEO traffic of these sites by adding their own competitive features to search result pages that appear above organic results.

If you search for a restaurant / hotel / flight on your phone, Google will often show its own custom widgets above the organic search results. It's not unusual that zero organic search results are visible "above the fold". The more Google does this, the more the share of clicks goes to them instead of to organic search results in these types of searches.

That means that even if these guide companies have #1 search rankings for every possible search term, they are seeing their SEO traffic plummet every month because they can't compete with Google's "above #1 result" placement. So as a defensive move, some companies are basically giving up on SEO traffic in the long term and trying to forcefully convert many visitors as possible into users who visit directly via a native app (and thus bypass Google). They know that every web user who doesn't download the native app is ever less likely to ever find them again via a search result page.

So to these companies, they see this change from Google as another anti-competitive move because Google is taking away one of their last remaining lifelines for user acquisition.

Personally, I find those full-page ads super annoying and hate them too and think they should go away. But like anything complicated, this isn't a simple black and white move to benefit users. It's also a strategic move that helps Google and hurts some competitors.

Kind of scary that Google is so much of a gatekeeper to the entire internet that they can essentially decide which websites get visited and coerce them into submission.

Milk is kept at the back of the store because that's the easiest please to put it from a logistics stand point. The truck the milk comes in pulls up to the back of the store and can immediately unload it into the giant refrigerated rooms at the back of the store. The fact that it helps "build the basket" by being at the back is a happy coincidence for the store.

>Is Google somehow morally obligated to ensure a website's revenue model...

This particular change doesn't irk me, but the one where they penalized for too many "above the fold" ads did bother me..because Google is the king of above-the-fold ads in search results. Similar for penalties for "duplicate content", which is exactly what their kg/widget program is doing...scraping other people's content.

So, as long they as practice as they preach, it seems reasonable.

I wonder how much of the internet userbase, like myself, just close a site the moment a pop-up appears which takes me away from what I want to be doing.

Has anyone here done any AB testing on it and have some numbers?