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Google later confirmed that the update went live in Jan: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-rolling-mobile-intrusive-interstitials-penalty-yesterday-2

Google later confirmed that the update went live in Jan: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-rolling-mobile-intrusive-interstitials-penalty-yesterday-267408 http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-rolling-mobile-i... I actually just added a full-screen video popup to a site a few days ago, and I made it so that it won't appear to googlebot. This wasn't for deceptive purposes, just because it wasn't relevant. I only show the video once to users, and it doesn't appear when they go back to the site...it's just a walkthrough of our products, which many people seem to need. I suspect many sites will check for googlebot and not show their popups to avoid this penalty.

jeromegv 9y ago
Showing something different to GoogleBot than your users is against terms of service, all good until you get caught.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  In my own case, I'm showing the same thing as users who have been there > 1 times. I could remove the check and it wouldn't make much difference, as gbot uses cookies anyway. For sites that always show the popup to users and never show it to gbot, I agree. However I've seen a lot of scammy sites that do this kind of time so I don't know how likely google is to find out about it.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  You're not getting "caught", and Google can fuck right off with any "terms of service" that I never agreed to about how I respond when they scrape my site without permission. I know that there are practical concerns here, but Google has done a masterful job of shaping the conversation so that many people think anything not sanctioned by Almighty Google with regard to SEO (let alone actual "blackhat" tactics) is illegal or immoral.
  - squeaky-clean 9y ago
    It's not illegal, but if you're hiding content from Googlebot because you don't want it to derank that page, once they crawl it with an agent that hides the fact that it's Google, they will then derank your whole website. So it's not illegal, but if you think you're beating Google by doing it, they're well aware of this workaround and will punish you harder. If you don't care about ranking, then no biggie. But why would you manipulate your web server like that if you weren't trying to rank.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    You’re giving permission to scrape by way of having a page accessible to the general public. If googlebot is bothering you so much, install a two line robots.txt and it’ll go away.
    - jiggunjer 9y ago
      robots can ignore your /robots.txt.
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        Googlebot, and every other search engine robot of note. Putting a page up on the public internet includes the risk that it may be visited.
  - falcor84 9y ago
    >scrape my site without permission. No one needs permission to request a web page, and that includes bots. But if that still bothers you, why not create arobots.txt with your preferences?

jeromegv 9y ago

Showing something different to GoogleBot than your users is against terms of service, all good until you get caught.

cpncrunch 9y ago
In my own case, I'm showing the same thing as users who have been there > 1 times. I could remove the check and it wouldn't make much difference, as gbot uses cookies anyway. For sites that always show the popup to users and never show it to gbot, I agree. However I've seen a lot of scammy sites that do this kind of time so I don't know how likely google is to find out about it.
ryanwaggoner 9y ago
You're not getting "caught", and Google can fuck right off with any "terms of service" that I never agreed to about how I respond when they scrape my site without permission. I know that there are practical concerns here, but Google has done a masterful job of shaping the conversation so that many people think anything not sanctioned by Almighty Google with regard to SEO (let alone actual "blackhat" tactics) is illegal or immoral.
- squeaky-clean 9y ago
  It's not illegal, but if you're hiding content from Googlebot because you don't want it to derank that page, once they crawl it with an agent that hides the fact that it's Google, they will then derank your whole website. So it's not illegal, but if you think you're beating Google by doing it, they're well aware of this workaround and will punish you harder. If you don't care about ranking, then no biggie. But why would you manipulate your web server like that if you weren't trying to rank.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  You’re giving permission to scrape by way of having a page accessible to the general public. If googlebot is bothering you so much, install a two line robots.txt and it’ll go away.
  - jiggunjer 9y ago
    robots can ignore your /robots.txt.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      Googlebot, and every other search engine robot of note. Putting a page up on the public internet includes the risk that it may be visited.
- falcor84 9y ago
  >scrape my site without permission. No one needs permission to request a web page, and that includes bots. But if that still bothers you, why not create arobots.txt with your preferences?