App Download Pop-Ups and Google's November Change

What Google said on Tuesday

On Tuesday Google said that from November 1, a page that greets visitors from its search results with an app download screen hiding a significant amount of the content will no longer count as mobile-friendly.

Since April, being mobile-friendly has helped pages in searches made on phones, page by page. A page that loses the label loses that help.

Google said other kinds of pop-up are not affected by this change, and suggested a simpler banner for promoting an app instead.

The change touches a fairly small group: businesses and organisations with an app of their own, and whoever set up the screen that promotes it.

The screen in question

Google calls it an app install interstitial: a panel that fills the phone's screen before the page appears.

It shows the app's icon, buttons for the App Store and Google Play, and a small link to carry on to the website. Some appear once per visitor; others appear on every visit, on every page.

• Festivals and events with a schedule and map app.
• Restaurants and cafes with an ordering or loyalty app.
• Gyms and studios with a class booking app.
• Retailers with a points or coupon app.
• Attractions selling tickets through an app.
• Local publications pushing their reading app.

The first is where the screen does most harm. Someone searching for an event on a phone usually wants a date, a time or an address, now, and the panel stands between them and it.

Why Google objects

A search result is a promise: tap this, and you will see the page described. A full-screen panel breaks the promise at the first moment.

Few people want to install an app to read one page. The link to continue is usually small and placed low, and some visitors never find it. Others give up and choose a different result.

Google's results on phones favour pages that work on phones, and a page you cannot see without dismissing a panel does not.

Check what search visitors see

The quickest test is the one your customers take. On a phone, search for your business, open your own listing in the results, and note what appears before the page.

Try it in a private browsing window as well. A screen set to appear once per visitor still appears to every new visitor, and most people arriving from search are new.

Then repeat the test on the inner pages that searches lead to: a menu, a schedule, a product, a location.

A worked example

A garage organisation company designs and installs wall panels, cabinets and overhead storage racks in homeowners' garages, and has a small showroom in an industrial unit.

Two years ago it paid a developer for a planning app: photograph a garage wall, drag panels, hooks and cabinets onto the picture, and send the plan in for a quote.

The mobile site opened every page with a full-screen invitation to download the planner, and a small link at the bottom to carry on to the website. Someone searching for overhead garage storage met the planner before the racks.

The owner read Tuesday's announcement and asked the developer to change it. Yesterday the full-screen panel came off.

In its place are the slim app banners that Safari on the iPhone and Chrome on Android can show, which leave the page visible. Each product page also offers the planner beneath its photographs of finished garages.

The banner that still works

A banner is a strip across the top or bottom of the screen, with the app's name, a button and a way to dismiss it. The page stays visible and usable beneath it.

Safari on the iPhone has a standard app banner of its own, and Chrome on Android now offers one too.

Both are set up in the site's code rather than designed from scratch, and both look and behave the way phone users expect.

A custom banner built into the site works on the same principle, provided it covers only a small part of the screen.

Offer the app where it helps

The strongest case for an app is made at the moment it is useful, not at the front door.

An app earns its keep with people who open it again and again. Someone checking opening hours once is not among them, and treating every visitor as a future app user is how the panel came about.

A festival app earns its place on the schedule page. An ordering app belongs beside the menu or on the confirmation after an order.

A loyalty app belongs wherever points are mentioned: the receipt, the counter, the email to existing customers. Customers who already know you are the likeliest to install it, and reaching them costs nothing in search.

What November 1 changes

Until November 1, nothing changes. From that date, pages that still show the panel to visitors from search lose the mobile-friendly label in phone results, and the help in phone rankings that comes with it.

Everything else that affects rankings still counts, so a strong page will not vanish. It will simply have given up one advantage to pages that let visitors straight in.

Two months is plenty of time for a change that, for most sites, is an afternoon's work.

The counter-case

Most small businesses have no app and nothing to change. Neither does a site that promotes its app with a banner, a link in the footer or a line on the right page.

A business planning an app for next year can design its promotion as a banner from the start, and skip the panel altogether.

Google said other kinds of pop-up are not part of this change. Newsletter and coupon panels on phones irritate visitors for similar reasons, but they are a separate question.

Where the full-screen panel exists, take it down, and promote the app with a banner and on the pages where it helps.

Before November 1

1. Search your business name on a phone.
2. Tap your own result and note what appears.
3. Repeat in a private window as a new visitor.
4. Remove the full-screen app panel entirely.
5. Switch on the browsers' own banners instead.
6. Offer the app on the pages where it helps.
7. Recheck key pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test.

Step four is the one Google's change is about. Every other step is good practice; this one decides whether the page keeps its label in November.

The other common reasons a page fails are covered in small reasons pages fail the Mobile-Friendly Test.

Frequently asked questions

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