Mobile browsing might feel like website owners are testing your sanity. You immediately get pop-up ads and “we use cookies” warnings. You get pop-ups asking permission to send more pop-ups in the form of notifications.

You close all that, but now you’ve got social sharing buttons floating over the page so you can’t read the text. I was trying to read a great article but these huge social sharing buttons were blocking the content:

Mobile pop-ups are enough to make you crazy!

It’s also enough to get a website owner penalized because Google feels your pain.

Google is issuing penalties to pop-up abusers

Since pop-ups are disruptive for users on smaller mobile screens, Google wants web developers to be smarter about how they use pop-ups.

As a result, Google has begun issuing penalties to mobile websites that use three kinds of pop-ups:

• Pop-ups on the first page of a mobile user’s visit.
• Pop-ups that hide the majority of the web page behind it.
• Interstitials, or an overlay pop-up that covers the entire screen, usually when you first visit a website.

The image below is provided by Google.

You need to play by Google’s rules so it might be time to revisit your pop-up strategy.

Make sure your website provides a better user experience for your mobile visitors.