Google's Phone Pop-Up Rule Starts Today

What changes today

From today, a page whose content is hard to reach for someone arriving from Google on a phone may be ranked lower in mobile results.

The target is the pop-up: the newsletter box, the offer, the full-screen appeal that covers the page the moment it loads on a phone.

Google announced the change in August, so it is no surprise to anyone who was watching. For many small businesses it is news this week, often because a pop-up plugin was added years ago and forgotten.

The rule is narrow, and most sites can comply in an afternoon.

What counts as intrusive

Google described the signal in terms of content that is hard to reach on arrival. On small business sites that usually means one of these.

• Newsletter sign-up boxes that cover the page as it loads.
• Full-screen offers and discount codes that must be closed first.
• Donation and survey appeals shown before any content.
• App download screens that stand in front of the page.
• A first screen built like a pop-up, with the real content pushed below.

The fifth catches sites that have no pop-up at all. A page whose first screen on a phone is one large offer, with the content starting underneath it, can look to Google like the same thing.

What does not count

Google listed exceptions, and they matter, because some boxes are there for good reasons.

Notices a business is legally required to show are exempt, such as a notice about cookie use or an age check on a site selling alcohol.

Login boxes are exempt where the content behind them is private and not shown in search results, such as a customer account area.

And small banners are exempt if they use a reasonable amount of the screen and are easy to dismiss. The slim app install banners built into Safari and Chrome fit that description.

How much it matters

Google has not said how much lower an affected page may rank, and any figure would be guesswork.

What it has said is that this is one signal among hundreds, and that a page which is clearly the best answer to a search may still rank well.

The signal applies to mobile search. Desktop results are not part of this change.

None of that is a reason to leave the pop-up in place. A box that annoys visitors arriving from search was costing something before today.

Timing and triggers

The rule is framed around what a visitor meets on arriving from a mobile search.

A box that appears only after someone has read most of the page, or reached a second page, is not that arrival experience. It is gentler on visitors too.

Most pop-up plugins and sign-up tools have settings for this: which devices see the box, how long it waits, how far down the page it appears.

The setting that matters today is the one for phones.

A worked example

A volunteer-run animal rescue in a growing suburb places cats and dogs in foster homes until they are adopted, and lists every animal on its website with photographs and a short description.

Many visitors find it by searching on a phone for pets to adopt nearby. Two years ago a volunteer added a donation appeal that filled the screen as soon as any page loaded, with a small cross in one corner.

On a phone, the first thing a visitor saw was a request for money from an organisation they had not yet looked at. The cross was hard to hit with a thumb, and some visitors left rather than try.

The rescue still needed donations. The appeal moved to a strip below the first row of animals, and to a line on each animal's page about what its care costs.

The full appeal now lives on the donation page, in the newsletter and in the thank-you message after an adoption application is sent.

Check your own site on a phone

Testing on a desktop will not show what phone visitors see, because many tools show different boxes to different devices.

Use a real phone. Search for your business and for the main service you offer, tap your own result, and watch what happens in the first few seconds.

Then look in Analytics at which pages phone visitors from search land on most, and test those too. The home page is often not the main one.

What to change

For most sites the choice is between a few simple changes.

Switch the pop-up off for phones and keep it on desktop, where it covers a smaller share of the screen. Or replace it on phones with a sign-up box in the page itself, after the main content.

A slim, easily closed bar along the top or foot of the screen is another option, and falls inside the exception Google described.

Legally required notices can stay, but they should be as small as the law allows, not a full screen of text.

Watching the effect

Mark today with an annotation in Analytics, plus another on the day the pop-up changes. Annotations are notes on the timeline that save guessing later.

Then watch visits from Google search on phones over the following weeks, alongside desktop. Rankings move for many reasons, so a single week proves little either way.

Sign-ups are worth watching too. A box shown later, or placed in the page, reaches people who have read enough to know whether they want it.

The counter-case

Some sites get few visits from mobile search, because their customers arrive by email, by referral or on desktop computers at work. For them this change matters less.

A sign-up box that works well on desktop can also stay where it is, since desktop results are not affected.

And some sites need a box on arrival: the age check for an online liquor shop, the notice about cookies. Those are exempt.

For everyone else the advice is plain: on phones, let visitors from search see the page before asking them for anything.

This week

1. Search your own business name on a phone.
2. Tap your own result and watch closely.
3. Test your top landing pages from search.
4. Turn off arrival pop-ups for phones.
5. Move sign-ups into the page itself.
6. Shrink required notices to a banner.
7. Annotate today in Analytics.

Step four is the change this rule is about. Everything else improves the site; that one decides whether a visitor from a mobile search meets your page or a box.

Telling apart the visitors who arrive from search on a phone, and those who only seem to come from nowhere, is covered in direct traffic that is not really direct.

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