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The Google mobile interstitial penalty began rolling out this week. It seems to still be rolling out as we speak but some sites got hit pretty hard.
Glenn Gabe posted some examples of pages loosing ten or more spots in their mobile rankings because of their interstitial placements. He shared several examples of before and after rankings.
He also believes it is still rolling out because there are tons of examples he is tracking that have yet to be hurt by this. He told me:
@rustybrick For the ones I picked up, they dropped by 10+ spots. But still not seeing widespread impact. I believe it's still rolling out.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 13, 2017
@rustybrick In other words, if it's fully rolled out, it has pretty much failed. :) I'll keep monitoring the situation and post updates.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 13, 2017
Again, you can see the examples over here but many have been hit pretty hard by this update.
Although folks in a WebmasterWorld thread have not seen examples that hit them directly yet. But it is still early.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
dsa
01/13/2017 01:52 pm
i doesnt work, also sites that had popups up until the start of this week are still as they have now removed them. So google allowed people to keep popups until today and not be punished.... way to go.. also so BIG companies are not affected by this only small businesses
Stephane
01/13/2017 03:37 pm
It must hurt bad real badly because I never used interstitials and got a nice bump in traffic (about 10% - 15%). https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9edc58e68bd38704aad53d7ef8e5cc99efd30321e7a498c86f587bf9f139ebb1.jpg
SJ
01/13/2017 03:42 pm
Why would Google punish them retrospectively for having a poor UX which they have now corrected?
Jerry B.
01/13/2017 04:29 pm
You want Google to penalize sites for following the rules? There is just no pleasing some people. Looks as though it is still rolling out, so maybe it will hit that site that ranks higher than yours soon. That's your real gripe, right?
Simon
01/13/2017 06:51 pm
Indeed. Why would Google punish someone retrospectively for something they've now corrected? Ooh, hang on. Isn't that what Panda and Penguin did/do?
nickey2009
01/14/2017 07:41 am
i lost around 60 % of traffic just due to a glitch in wordpress that was leading mobile 404 soft errors....i rectified it but i think damaged has been done...
SEO Rank My Business
01/14/2017 10:10 am
Will it really hurt our site ranking?
Matt Fielding
01/14/2017 03:37 pm
No... only if the issues haven't been corrected.
Simon
01/14/2017 04:53 pm
Penguin and Panda are/were punitive. Even once issues were fixed, a site could still be impacted for many months or years afterwards. It was never just fix site and you'll be fine. Many sites had to wait a lot longer than a recrawl/manual Panda/Penguin update and many 'clean' sites have still not recovered from Panda. So perfectly reasonable to question why Google isn't taking that approach with interstitials.
Matt Fielding
01/15/2017 05:08 pm
This no longer applies to Penguin now that it's real time. There's no need to take this approach with Interstitials because this penalty is not a complicated algorithm; they're either there or they aren't. It's not about punishing webmasters like naughty schoolchildren, it's about the quality of search results.
Jerry Martinez
01/15/2017 11:45 pm
I predict that Forbes won't get hit even though they have the most irritating, obnoxious interstitials I've ever seen.
Jerry B.
01/16/2017 01:58 am
Forbes is among the worst offenders when it comes to obnoxious crap delaying access to crappy to mediocre linkfarm-ish content on desktop, but their stuff is AMPed on mobile. So no mobile interstitials to trigger the penalty.
BushyTop
01/16/2017 10:11 am
Bizarre, we dont use them and we have seen a drop in both mobile and desktop in the past week. We are also being out ranked by a site that is using interstitials. Shame, we had seen some really nice movements since 15th December.
dribble
01/16/2017 03:08 pm
go back to webmaster world, you have one shyte site but yet fill that forum with your dribble. we dont want it here too.
32
01/16/2017 03:10 pm
definate movement last two days not related to this mobile rubbish as I have no ads///
Stephane
01/16/2017 03:50 pm
And today it climbed again....
BushyTop
01/16/2017 04:15 pm
Hahahaha! Thanks for your help, your community spirit warms me unconditionally.
dribbler
01/16/2017 04:17 pm
dribble got his dick caught in the George Foreman
Chelle
01/16/2017 08:46 pm
All of this ^^^ is correct.
Simon
01/16/2017 09:07 pm
Yes and no. I'm not suggesting Google should penalise sites after issues are resolved (I feel strongly the opposite), just that Google's penalties for various offences are disproportionate and inconsistent and SER commenters are fickle. Before P4, site owners would post on SER about how they'd been hit by Penguin years earlier and still hadn't recovered despite disavowing/link-removal. And they'd be immediately attacked by the resident trolls telling them that they're spammers and so don't deserve to recover as they'd tried to game Google. Now we're seeing the opposite; support for webmasters who had tried to game Google and knowingly pissed off users but then fixed the issue, even though interstitials are a flagrant and intentional breach of guidelines that negatively impact users, whereas bad links are potentially neither. It's perfectly reasonable to question why Google isn't penalizing sites for a time after compliance, given Google does so with other breaches of the webmaster guidelines. You may disagree with penalising after compliance (and so do I), but Google did it for years, so it's interesting they're not doing it in this case. It's naive to say it's "about the quality of search results". If that were true, Google would have simply ignored bad links years ago as other SEs did, rather than continually penalising sites until it finally U-turned with P4. The reason Google kept webmasters filtered/penalised under Panda and Penguin for a long time after the site was clean (and had been recrawled, update run, etc) wasn't necessarily to "punish them like naughty schoolchildren". It was potentially so Google could see a sustained compliance with guidelines over time before releasing the site. You mentioned the complexity of the algo, but I'm not sure why that is relevant.
Matt Fielding
01/16/2017 10:29 pm
I understand your argument, I just don't agree with it for the reasons outlined previously. For those same reasons I think Google is handling this correctly, but I'll agree to disagree. I don't think my view is naive though, search quality is something Google invest in heavily for a very good reason - profit.
Boris Vin
01/17/2017 11:26 am
Google Mobile Intrusive Interstitial surly going to hurt those websites which are not responsive and there content are not properly visible to user.
Nick Ker
01/17/2017 12:38 pm
The difference between the handling of mobile interstitial penalty and Penguin is that Penguin penalized things that had been against the published rules for quite a while before the penalty was imposed. No sites were penalized retroactively for something that wasn't there anymore. The mobile interstitial penalty is a new rule, so it would make no sense to retroactively penalize a site if they don't have any such interstitials at the time the penalty/filter was put in place.
Stephen Perkins
01/17/2017 01:10 pm
They are also different because Penguin went after links which were built to manipulate the search results. The intent made that a reason for the penalties to last as punitive or to ensure compliance or both. The mobile interstitials are just bad UX which Google has chosen to not support.
Stephen Perkins
01/17/2017 01:12 pm
"It was never just fix site and you'll be fine." For Panda it was.
Simon
01/17/2017 01:15 pm
This isn't a new rule. Interstitials have breached webmaster guidelines since time began as they show something different to the user than to Google. Unlike Panda and Penguin where webmasters and users are potentially ignorant to having anything wrong with the site, interstitials have obvious negative intent. This is simply the first time Google has enforced that through a penalty. I see no difference to Penguin. Penguin didn't only penalise sites that started building links after it went live, it penalised any site that already had them and continued hitting them even after they disavowed/removed links. However, I guess I'm being poor at making my point. I'm not saying that Google should penalise sites even after the interstitial is removed; quite the opposite. I'm saying that this demonstrates Google being inconsistent and disproportionate with its penalties. Panda and Penguin should have worked like the interstitial penalty, like P4 and like all other SEs; they should just demote offending pages rather than killing the whole site for years. Google's finally U-turned with Penguin, but not yet with Panda. Hopefully that will come soon.
Simon
01/17/2017 01:28 pm
If your argument is that level of punishment should relate to intent, interstitials should be of a similar order to Panda and Penguin. Without wanting to stir a wasp's nest, plenty of webmasters were ignorant to what their third party SEOs were doing with link-building, so there was no 'intent' for the webmaster to breach guidelines and/or no understanding of implications. So, yes, ignore the bad links as P4 now does, but the previous punitive side was crazy. With Panda, even more so. On the other hand, with interstitials, there is plain intent to show the user something different to what they clicked on from Google and it's obvious to any lay person that interstitials can be seriously annoying. However, as per previous comments, I'm not making myself very clear. I'm not suggesting interstitials should be penalised after being removed. I'm suggesting that the penalties from Panda and Penguin were grossly disproportionate to what is now being done, and they should never have been so severe.
Simon
01/17/2017 01:29 pm
Sadly not. As Glenn Gabe puts it, Panda is 'missing in action'. Many many clean sites have seen no recovery. It's as if it's stopped working since 4.2.
Sambo
01/17/2017 02:16 pm
No. Penguin and Panda penalized existing violations, not things done previously that were undone before the penalty rolled out. Panda would clear not very long after fixing if the issues were really fixed. Penguin filters were removed at next update if problems were fixed. Granted, that time got longer for penguin, but if a site still had enough spam links after a few years penguin updates then the webmaster was either continuing to spam or the site just didnt deserve to rank.
Jerry B's mom
01/17/2017 02:19 pm
"This isn't a new rule. Interstitials have breached webmaster guidelines since time began as they show something different to the user than to Google" None of that is accurate.
Simon
01/17/2017 02:49 pm
It's cloaking. I'm sure you've heard of that. If I could be bothered, I'd point you to the Hangout where I asked John precisely this question and he agreed.
Jerry B's mom
01/17/2017 02:57 pm
You are reaching at straws. It's only cloaking if googlebot is not shown the interstitial. Some interstitials are indeed cloaking, but not all. I would say most are not.
Simon
01/17/2017 03:12 pm
That's a good point, but doesn't help. If you're saying many/most interstitials are not cloaking as Googlebot can see them just fine, then those pages shouldn't rank for the content hidden underneath. Google has said for a long time it will largely ignore content not visible on load, hence webmasters being constantly reminded of GSC Fetch and Render. So if it's not cloaking, these sites have all been on borrowed time anyway and shouldn't rank for the hidden content.
Simon
01/17/2017 08:22 pm
I think you're splitting hairs. Both Panda and Penguin penalised a site by (1) filtering all or much of the site rather than simply demoting offending pages and (2) continued to do this even after the site was clean. This was completely disproportionate to the offence, and inconsistent with the interstitial penalty. The fact Google has done a U-turn on this with P4 demonstrates even they acknowledge the problems here. Lots of generalisation here about Panda clearing soon after fixing (not just you, others have wrongly said this too.) It actually depends when you're talking about as Panda recovery time varied massively. There was a short period when Panda allegedly ran every 10 days, other times when you had to wait a year, but since 4.2, Panda doesn't appear to be working at all. So some sites due for Panda recovery have recovered quickly, some slowly and some not at all.
Sambo
01/18/2017 12:18 pm
It is not spitting hairs to differentiate between before and after or to point out the difference between things that still exist and those that do not. You were saying Penguin and Panda penalized retroactively and that is just not true. Your claims about Panda not working for a year sound like you have been getting all your info from bloggers who are trying to sell you something. Lots of people had to wait because they thought they had fixed the problems which triggered Penguin or Panda when in reality they did not.