back to article Google tells popup ads to p*** off on mobes

Google will be rejigging its search algorithm to downgrade websites that slap up a large advert, aka an "interstitial," before readers can actually get to see the content. On January 10, the Chocolate Factory will start scanning websites for interstitials and, if they break the recommended guidelines, they'll be kicked down …

  1. vir

    I'm sure the ad men will come up with an even more irritating replacement, though in the meantime, it will be refreshing to be able to visit pages without having to decline to install an app.

    1. Baldy50

      Good news that they're listening to their consumer base? Maybe?

      If the OS and APPS are good people will forgive a little and it's a balance between functionality, ease of use, the rest and a company that makes money from advertising, it's a free OS sort of!

      The stop p ing us off message might be getting through, I'm an optimist!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The stopping us off message might be getting through, I'm an optimist!

        Given that it is Google, you're *WAY* too optimistic.

        and, if they break the recommended guidelines, they'll be kicked down the rankings and thus get fewer visitors.

        What you're looking at is implementing a control mechanism in the hands of Google. Unelected, uncontrolled, definitely not transparent, as far removed from accountability as your average politician and rife with conflict of interest because who, pray, makes the most $$$ with advertising? Golly, what an *amazing* coincidence!

        If there was a wholly independent organisation doing this, fine. As it's Google I would be vewwy, vewwy careful. They don't care about your "message" - they only care about their profit.

        That said, both Google and Apple could do with clearer labelling of "free" apps - I think apps that download ads onto your hardware should be labelled as such, as it's not quite as "free" as they pretend. Apps makers that switch from free to ad-supported should not be allowed to do that as an update, but as a new version, this to prevent "thin end of the wedge" strategies (we already have that in Data Protection law, you can't expand your use of submitted personal data without permission - which is why I'm about to have fun with companies sending me surveys - the second most hated contents of my inbox).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "That said, both Google and Apple could do with clearer labelling of "free" apps - I think apps that download ads onto your hardware should be labelled as such"

          Don't know about Apple but Google does this already on Android. It states under the Install button the words "Contains ads" and/or "In-app purchases". If you click for more info it then tells you the cost of the in-app purchases.

    2. werdsmith Silver badge

      Has any study been done on the effectiveness of these ads?

      Presumably they must work in order for companies to keep paying for them, but to me it is counter-intuitive that pissing people off and associating a brand with irritation is a good thing.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Google Internet Police

      I dislike overlay ads as much as the next person.

      But I dislike Google's self-appointed policing of the Internet even more. I like my legislators to be seated with a vote.

      I know why and I know how we're in this position. But it needs to stop. The Internet does not belong to Google.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Google Internet Police

        "The Internet does not belong to Google."

        But their search engine does, use another one FFS.

        1. VinceH

          Re: Google Internet Police

          While, yes, it's their search engine, it's not an issue of just using a different one - the internet police reference isn't an end user issue in this instance, it's about Gryzzl Google laying down the law about what site owners can and can't have on their websites*. You can argue about different search engines until you're blue in the face, but the problem is that Gryzzl Google is huge, and Gryzzl Google is therefore important when it comes to being found.

          * Although this is a rock and a hard place situation, because I like that this sort of advertising is being pressured out - but it's not even the thin end of the wedge, because Gryzzl Google have already started doing this sort of thing, such as downranking sites that aren't mobile friendly (big widely spaced buttons, etc). The wedge is in, and they're pushing it further in.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Google Internet Police

            AFAIK they are only downranking non-mobile friendly pages if you search from a mobile device. That kinda makes sense, sites that show a fixed width or even a scrunched up version of their site on mobile are a PITA and if there was an alternative that could be read on mobile that would be preferential in the rankings.

            Spacing of buttons, doesn't affect rankings as far as I know, just whether it redirects to an m. site or is responsive.

            Although I don't like the power of Google, it seems fair to say that if you have a crap site with a crap experience for visitors it is deemed not as useful and so is downranked - not as a punishment but just to ensure the top results are the best quality.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: not as a punishment but just to ensure the top results are the best quality.

              Hmm, yes, of course Google would never use this for other reasons, they certainly would never lie about why they do things.

              Do you want to buy a bridge?

        2. tony2heads
          Linux

          Re: Google Internet Police

          Perhaps DuckDuckGo

          (icon: nearest to a duck)

      2. Mark Simon

        Re: Google Internet Police

        Agreed. Personally I’ve stopped using Google, but the point is that most users haven’t, and Google have much too much power to influence what people get to see. That’s one reason I changed — I was tired of Google skewing the results towards what might be more profitable.

        There was a time when web developers had to check whether Internet Explorer granted the permission to use features available in other browsers. Now developers will need Google’s permission to develop a site that will be noticed. I think that is one reason why proper use of HTML5 features has been slow moving.

        I hate ads probably more than the next person, but I would never trust Google to decide who has the right to get noticed.

  2. No Quarter

    Cookies

    Can we forget the cookie nonsense as well? We are leaving the cesspit of the EU soon and they can stick their cookie law where the sun doesn't shine.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cookies

      Some of us have never been in the EU and still get assaulted with it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cookies

      Yeah, fuck the EU and their pro-privacy laws. Who needs privacy, seriously.

      1. glen waverley

        Re: Cookies

        AC says "Yeah, fuck the EU and their pro-privacy laws. Who needs privacy, seriously."

        Right on. Good irony.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Cookies

          That cookie law was always stupid. If you click "no" the site has to give you a cookie to remember that, or ask you on every. single. page. Law be buggered, I never bothered with it. It's external advertiser's tracking cookies that are the problem; but the people writing the laws do not understand what they're doing.

          Here in Spain -and I kid you not- there is a jihad on contact forms, because the arsehats who write the laws cannot tell the difference between a contact form and a mailing list subscription thingy. I ignore that one too.

          Never did interstitials; external adverts; or sound that fired on page load. First client I ever sacked wanted sound (it was MIDI-ish at the time - 8-bit boing, twang, dong) and wouldn't believe no for an answer. Up until then, I didn't know you could sack a client...it was very liberating.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Cookies

            That cookie law was always stupid

            That's a not entirely unexpected result of politicians trying to regulate things they don't understand, augmented by the fact that few technical people have the skills to clarify the issue for them without lapsing into jargon and detail. If we don't find a way to close that gap, this sort of nonsense will keep happening.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cookies

        Yeah, fuck the EU and their pro-privacy laws. Who needs privacy, seriously.

        The issue is peoples abuse of a perfectly valid piece of technology. Cookies work around the problem of HTTP being stateless by allowing the client to tell the server, "I'm so-and-so that you talked to 5 minutes ago".

        Useful for sites like this one unless you like typing your username and password with every post.

        The problem, is people abusing them to track people across unrelated websites. I don't mind if there's a cookie that says "I logged into gmail" that gets seen by Blogger (another Google service). The two are run by the same company, and use the same log-in system. I object though if that same cookie is witnessed by Amazon, as frankly it is none of their business. Similarly, I object to DoubleClick.net seeing that cookie, as although they're a Google service, that service has nothing technically to do with providing the service I'm using: it merely funds it.

        It's not the use of cookies that's the problem, it's how they're used, and it's exactly what the EU law ignores.

  3. hellwig

    Hey Googly...

    ""We previously explored a signal that checked for interstitials that ask a user to install a mobile app," the Chocolate Factory's webmaster blog states.""

    You explored this, but did you fix it? I'd love it if you punished those apps in the app store too, not just the websites.

    1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      Re: Hey Googly...

      99% of PlayStore would vanish if Google removed all apps that were vulnerable to click-fraud, phishing, and hijacks through malicious adverts. That's not good business to a company making money from data collection and advertising.

      The real motivation is for Google blocking online crap is that it's not Google's online crap.

      1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

        Re: Hey Googly...

        The real motivation is for Google blocking online crap is that it's not Google's online crap.

        Exactly. May you receive many, many upvotes.

  4. regprentice

    Between these large ads, banners for advising cookie use as well asother floating taskbars/menus many websites are difficult to navigate or read on even a decent sized phone. Especially when these ads seem designed to get in the way of normal navigation to trigger 'false' clickthroughs.

    I clicked on the article in the hope that this was to deal with the increasing problem of full page 'popup/popunder' type ads that seem tobe prevalent now...'your system has 24 virus and will self destruct in 2 minutes. Not malwRe on the device and seemi gly pushed by google ads.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jimbo Wales is watching you pee

    Visited wikipedia earlier. Begging banner took up 50% of my 1080p screen.

    Slap em Google.

    1. Whitter
      Unhappy

      Re: Jimbo Wales is watching you pee

      A fundraiser for an organisation with more money than it knows what to do with.

      Other than trying to get even more of course.

  6. jonnycando

    I surprise myself

    That I don't mind the cookie message so much even as I don't like pop ups any other time. At least the cookie message is easily dismissed.

  7. Shovel

    l

    Ironic that El Reg should report on this while it allows oversized banner ads to dominate my Mobile screen. "Waze the Internet "

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All That Power...

    * Wonder what kind of 'privacy-shield' the big slurpers have for protecting their own families. Especially the more vulnerable such as parents / kids etc. We know Zuk covers the mic / webcam. But in general, what do the 'tech royalty' do...

    * Does Googhoul suck up all its family's info, or is there a special Tor / VPN like filter, that protects the chosen few, the type of feature that only tech-billionaires have.

    * Or maybe its simpler. Perhaps, the inner circle just type a short code into every search and the system magically ignores any trace. (Auto-filled Toolbar Search)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Lots of downvotes...

      But no comments to say why.... WTF fellow Reg'ers???

      Lots of pro-Google robots on the forums today maybe?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did you know ...

    If you have an ad blocker with a “Block this ad” function, you can usually get it to block pop-ups, interstitials, cookie warnings … And, indeed, anthing else that you consider to be clutter on a particular page or site.

  10. Robert Ramsay

    Goodbye to...

    pinterest, instagram, facebook

    (if you're not logged in)

  11. Blank-Reg
    Mushroom

    Excellent. Make sure they include that pop up of the devil that stops you visiting any forum: Tapatalk. It needs to rot in hell with all the photocopiers and "multifunction devices".

    1. quxinot

      Upvoted for Tapatalk hate.

  12. RonWheeler

    Overlays

    The new popup. But harder to block. And even harder to shift on mobile.

  13. WibbleMe

    Basically, Google is pushing their APM (Accelerated Mobile Pages Project) web page format that handles THEIR adverts nicely on mobiles.

    So if staff members of The Register are reading this take note!

  14. jaywin

    Intersitals

    Looks to me like the problem with interstitals is that they're becoming more popular because of people using the likes of ad-block, and they're more likely to be sold in house than through the likes of Adsense, depriving Google not only of their revenue, but their data-gathering too.

  15. Valeyard

    they need to solve the SERIOUS problems:

    sites where you've clicked a link to a specific page, which displays happily for 2 seconds, until the site says "oh you're on a mobile. allow me to switch to mobile view, and redirect you BACK TO THE FRONT PAGE AND NOT THE CONTENT YOU CAME FOR. have a nice day"

  16. RyokuMas
    Devil

    The hidden truth...

    "We previously explored a signal that checked for interstitials that ask a user to install a mobile app"

    And there, tucked quietly away, is the real reason behind this. Google do not want you using apps - they want you using websites and thus continually adding to their vast coffers of profiling information. And by hiding behind a claim of "removing interstitials", they can make this appear palatable to most people, including the IT-savvy, in exactly the same way as having carriers responsible for rolling out Android updates makes the idea of Google having control over said updates seem reasonable.

    Just another step in the grand plan to create a monopoly and manipulate people into welcoming it.

  17. Tubz Silver badge

    Go one better and just run an ad blocker on your router to stop it connecting to ad networks :D

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