Google has announced an interesting change to their services, to help frustrated users access content on their mobiles more quickly and easily, without having to face intrusive interstitials.
Google announced the upcoming change to their mobile search experience on their blog, explaining how intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users, rather than other pages where content is immediately accessible. Mobile devices often have smaller screens and, interstitials are often problematic and frustrating for mobile users. This is why Google have announced an update to their algorithms, used to rank their mobile search results, penalising offending pages by ranking them in lower placing.
The update will be in place from 10th January 2017, with the aim to improve the overall mobile search experience. It is worrying how this change will affect publishers’ advertising revenue, as ads will inevitably be limited in size, affecting the amount of money publishers can get, and attention that advertisers can grab on mobile search sites.
It will be interesting to see how this will impact publishers, and whether penalising websites will in fact improve a mobile users experience, or whether companies will continue to find new ways to advertise, whilst avoiding the use of the dreaded pop-up ads.