Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that "legal interstitials are fine as long as we can index the content without having to do anything special." That means that you are not requiring GoogleBot to click on anything to accept and load the content after.
This includes that you should "avoid redirecting interstitials, avoid replacing/blocking the full content" said John Mueller.
And with this, normally legal interstitials include religious interstitials and the same rules apply there.
Here is John's tweet:
Legal interstitials are fine as long as we can index the content without having to do anything special (eg avoid redirecting interstitials, avoid replacing/blocking the full content). Googlebot doesn't click through, we need the content in the HTML or on the page.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) December 3, 2019
A bit more:
Via @johnmu For GDPR overlays, Google tries to recognize legal banners & differentiate them from ad banners. John originally thought G might need markup for that, but Google figures it out well. But don't replace content w/interstitials. Could cause issues https://t.co/p09abdqMuc pic.twitter.com/bLxXntmVBH
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 26, 2019
So just be careful and test to see how Google sees the content with your interstitials. You can use the URLInspection tool.
Forum discussion at Twitter
