The era of incredible annoyingness of app install ads on mobile webpages may finally coming to an end. Now on, if you show mobile visitors who come to your site from a Google search big ad pops in, in which you promote your app, you might probably loose your mobile-friendly tag.
Not just that, you can even show up much lesser than you did in Google’s mobile search results.
When you follow a link on your phone’s browser to a website, instead of you getting what your eyes were waiting to see, a big ad is flashed in your face. This greeting saying ‘download our app’ is definitely not a pleasant one when you really have got nothing to do with that app. Though it goes away with a tap, but its constant homecoming with every other link gets really annoying. We’re glad Google has realized it and wants to end the era of Interstitial mobile ads .
In a post on its “Webmaster Central” blog, Google announced that it’s going to give purveyors of these app install interstitials a black mark on its “Mobile-Friendly Test,” which improves or worsens a site’s performance in search rankings based on how smartphone-compatible it is. In its initial incarnation, announced in April, the algorithm tweak primarily targeted sites whose designs weren’t optimized for a mobile browsing experience.
“We’ve recently made it easier for users to find and discover apps and mobile-friendly web pages,” writes Google software engineer Daniel Bathgate in today’s post. “However, sometimes a user may tap on a search result on a mobile device and see an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content and prompts the user to install an app. Our analysis shows that it is not a good search experience and can be frustrating for users because they are expecting to see the content of the web page.”
We agree with this.
It is indeed annoying when we’re on our mobile browser and we are forcefully rubbed with an app ad in our face, which even covers up half the screen. In our opinion, Google is also to be blamed for this garbage pushing unto us. We see that Google has this section of search results called “More content in apps” where it would push us to install apps that we don’t already have.
This is so because the content in these apps is also available on mobile web. The content can be accessed at a click even without showing us those ads, but in that way, Google will not be able to make business until it pushes us into downloading the app. So we don’t think there’s a point being annoyed at just the publishers because it’s been Google who’s doing the annoying pushing.
Till late, not everyone really felt the need to have an app. Building apps has been expensive, and so has the maintenance if you do not have a good user base, it wasn’t definitely worth it. However, publishers have been considering them over the time for a few good motives. There is direct one-on-one connection with the user, and also sending in notifications and keeping the user involved in your product. This is what is getting many major players in the market to turn their mobile web into applications that would stick on to the user’s personal gadget.
It’ll be good to see Google now revaluating all the garbage that it has been providing fodder to in its search results.
