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Google’s App Interstitial Giant Ad Penalty Is Now Live

Yesterday, Google released an update to their mobile-friendly algorithm, penalizing sites using giant app install interstitial ads.

Barry Schwartz on November 3, 2015 at 9:32 am

On September 1, Google told us that giant ads for apps may lead to ranking declines starting on November 1. Well, that algorithm, aka the “app install interstitial penalty,” went live a day late, on November 2.

Google announced it on various social networks, including Google+, saying:

Starting today, pages with an app install interstitial that hide a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page won’t be considered mobile-friendly.

This penalty will be built right into the overall Google mobile-friendly algorithm, so this makes November 2 the second day of Mobilegeddon. Or maybe not. I have yet to see complaints from webmasters about being hit by a penalty yesterday.

Google’s advice?

Instead of full page interstitials, we recommend that webmasters use more user-friendly formats such as app install banners. We hope that this change will make it easier for searchers to see the content of the pages they are looking for.

To learn more about exactly which mobile configurations are at risk, see our original story from September 1.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.