How Google is punishing sites that use pop-up ads

Google is about to deal a blow to the web’s pop-up and interstitial advertisements, reports The Verge.

It has begun ranking those who use the annoying advertisements lower in in its search rankings, in the hopes that the decrease in site traffic will stop website owners from resorting to these types of ads.

If a site is still regarded to be the best source it will still appear first, but those that are regarded as secondary or equivalent with another site that doesn’t feature pop-ups will now rank lower.

“Google’s intention is to not just direct people to more informative results, but to results that work better for them — e.g., don’t annoy them with a pop-up — too.”

“This is something Google has increasingly been doing with its search algorithm. Last year it began boosting the rank of “mobile friendly” websites, and in 2014, it began boosting the rank of sites with encryption as well”.

These changes will come into effect on 10 January 2017.