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Per http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/09/mobile-friendly-web-pages-using-app.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/09/mobile-fr...

Per http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/09/mobile-friendly-web-pages-using-app.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/09/mobile-fr... "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. This does not affect other types of interstitials." This implies the answer is No, since that's another type of interstitial (not an app install) -- but is one that blocks most of the page content. It's curious that they're analyzing the nature of the popup closely enough to determine that.

jfoster 11y ago
Perhaps they're approximating by analyzing the page as a mobile user agent and a non-mobile user agent, then comparing.
- rhizome 11y ago
  They know what the content is, so they can probably analyze CSS when retrieving via JS.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Or they could just see if it contains links to the app/play store.
tripzilch 11y ago
Which is weird because most of the reasons they give are valid for any type of interstitial, there's not a lot of reasons that set app interstitials apart from others that are relevant to the user. They're basically a new kind of pop-up window, an annoyance that you have to click away. I don't remember browsers only blocking certain kinds of pop-ups based on content, they just see if it wasn't initiated by a user-action, it'll get blocked. I suppose for Google there may be some reasons why they want to block the app-interstitials (I guess because they want to encourage keeping the content they index on the web, not in an app?), but even then, that's still no reason not to punish the other types of interstitial just as much. Trying to make the distinction is just making it harder on themselves, they will occasionally get it wrong, or people will complain that their interstitial shouldn't be punished because it is (somehow) not quite about the app--making the criteria a bit broader seems like it's easier for Google and better for the users?

jfoster 11y ago

Perhaps they're approximating by analyzing the page as a mobile user agent and a non-mobile user agent, then comparing.

rhizome 11y ago
They know what the content is, so they can probably analyze CSS when retrieving via JS.
IshKebab 11y ago
Or they could just see if it contains links to the app/play store.

tripzilch 11y ago

Which is weird because most of the reasons they give are valid for any type of interstitial, there's not a lot of reasons that set app interstitials apart from others that are relevant to the user. They're basically a new kind of pop-up window, an annoyance that you have to click away. I don't remember browsers only blocking certain kinds of pop-ups based on content, they just see if it wasn't initiated by a user-action, it'll get blocked. I suppose for Google there may be some reasons why they want to block the app-interstitials (I guess because they want to encourage keeping the content they index on the web, not in an app?), but even then, that's still no reason not to punish the other types of interstitial just as much. Trying to make the distinction is just making it harder on themselves, they will occasionally get it wrong, or people will complain that their interstitial shouldn't be punished because it is (somehow) not quite about the app--making the criteria a bit broader seems like it's easier for Google and better for the users?