Google will soon rank some mobile sites with pop-ups lower in search

Google will soon rank sites with clumsy interstitials ads lower than those which are more responsible, the company announced today.

The change will affect mobile sites, and only those which have ads that take up an entire screen or otherwise block content wholly. Ads that try to trick you into thinking it’s part of the content (like leaving the article header in place with ads below it) are also being pinged.

Some full-screen interstitials won’t be affected. Easily dismissed banners, age verification and login boxes are okay by Google’s standards.

Google is also dropping the ‘mobile-friendly’ label from search results. It found that roughly 85 percent of webpages meet the criteria for mobile, so it’s dropping the search tag entirely.