Google Continues to Push Against App Interstitials

If their recent recommendation wasn't clear enough, rumblings at Google continue to point out that app interstitials are not a good idea. Most recently, a question was tweeted as to whether or not Google was still going to make app interstitials a negative ranking factor. Google's Gary Illyes responded with a tweet that was non-committal but telling.

However, a recent article by Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp, gives us another possibility to consider. He feels strongly that Google is taking this stance because Apps threaten their business model. Once a visitor moves away from mobile search to the app of their choice they don't go back to search so Google loses that potential customer. To learn more about this theory read the full article here.

The important thing to remember for now is that, although Google doesn't like interstitials, they aren't a negative ranking factor yet. So, if your stats show that your app interstitial is working for you then continue on course. We will keep you posted if Google's stance gets more aggressive.

Sept 2nd Update: Google released a blog post right after we went to publish taking a much more aggressive stance against interstitials. For starters they are updating the Mobile Friendly Test to tell sites using App Interstitials that it's not a best practice with recommendations on removing/correcting them to be more mobile friendly. Then, starting November 1st, any website that is using an App Interstitial will no longer be considered Mobile Friendly.

After November 1, mobile web pages that show an app install interstitial that hides a significant amount of content on the transition from the search result page will no longer be considered mobile-friendly.