Google made a significant announcement this week regarding two major changes related to its mobile search results which will help to enhance the user’s browsing experience.
- The “mobile-friendly” label will be removed.
This label currently highlights pages that are easy to read on mobile during its mobile search results.
- Punish mobile pages that show annoying ads
Starting from January 2017, Google will be punishing the mobile pages showing intrusive and annoying ads that have smallest or unclear “Close” button for dismissing the ads.
What kind of ads will be punished?
- Popups that hide the main content when users move to a page
- Popups that need to be dismissed before you can access the main content or pages
The second category of popup ads are especially infuriating, because they often push the main content down, while loading. Some of them even lead you to accidentally clicking on them.
What kind of ads will not be punished?
Interstitials like login dialogs (if it is a legal obligation to keep them) and dialogs that won’t push a site down in Google’s rankings. Google will not be punishing all the mobile sites that show such popup ads, but the ones that make content less accessible.
Removing “mobile-friendly label”
Google’s own data reveals that 85% of all pages displayed on its mobile search result pages are now mobile-friendly. In order to avoid ambiguity, Google is planning to remove this label, though it is being used as a ranking signal.
