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Google’s Current Approach to Interstitials: What You Need to Know
We first wrote about interstitial ads when Google first started penalizing websites that use them, way back in 2017. New standards went into effect during 2025, so it’s a good time for a review.
Interstitial ads are those that pop up and take up a large portion of the screen, especially on mobile devices. It can make the website experience frustrating or difficult for visitors to access the content they came for. Google has been clear that this poor user experience may lead to ranking penalties.
The official “mobile intrusive interstitials penalty” has been in effect since 2017, and it is still highly relevant in 2025. Google still evaluates sites for intrusive ads and, in many cases, penalizes or downgrades them if they are problematic. Violations include:
- Immediately covering or blocking the main content when a user clicks through from a Google mobile search result
- Forcing users to dismiss a full-screen or near full-screen overlay before seeing any content
- Using page layouts that mimic such interstitials by pushing content below the fold so that the above-the-fold view looks like an ad or overlay
Google does not apply penalties to every interstitial, however. The following are still considered acceptable:
- Cookie consent banners, age verification pop-ups, or other legally required dialogs
- Login prompts or paywalls for content not publicly available or indexable
- Banners that are small, unobtrusive, take little screen space, or are easy to close or dismiss
- Interstitials triggered after some sort of user interaction, such as scrolling, time-spent, or exit intent, as long as they don’t block immediate entry to content
Because Google now uses mobile-first indexing and heavily weights page experience signals, poorly implemented interstitials can hurt more than just a website’s rankings. They can degrade overall site performance, user engagement, and indirectly impact SEO via metrics like bounce rate, dwell time, and speed or stability of loading.
If you are using any kind of interstitials or overlays on your mobile site, you should:
- Review them now and see if they violate Google's guidelines
- Consider replacing full-screen modals with small banners or delayed pop-ups
- Make them dismissible and ensure content is still reachable and indexable
- Monitor technical performance metrics and UX metrics to catch any negative trends quickly
If you need someone to assess and modify interstitials on your website, contact the Sprocket team. We’re happy to take on this task for you and help you find new ways to boost your website’s SEO. Give us a call today!
Photo by Ron Lach
Photo by Pixabay
This article is an update to “The Impact of Google’s Mobile Intrusive Interstitials Penalty” dated 1/13/2017.
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The Sprocket Team
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