Technical Foundations · 1.10
No Intrusive Interstitials
A pop-up covering the page the moment someone arrives, before they've had a chance to look at anything at all — this could be an offer, a newsletter sign-up box, or a cookie banner that's badly designed and blocks the whole screen.
Why this matters
The customer’s side
Arriving on a page only to have it immediately blocked by a pop-up is genuinely frustrating, and can make a website look scammy or untrustworthy — exactly the wrong first impression for a business someone's about to trust with selling their home. Some visitors will simply leave rather than deal with it.
The search engine’s side
A named Google penalty, weighted heavily on mobile
Google has an explicit, named penalty for this specifically on mobile search — a directly measured signal, not something inferred from behaviour. It does apply to desktop too, but the penalty is weighted more heavily toward mobile, since a full-screen pop-up is far more disruptive on a small screen.
See it happen
Same page, same visitor. One of these they actually get to see.
Blocked on arrival
Sign up for 10% off!
✕ closeNothing else is visible until they find the close button.
Visible on arrival
The actual page, immediately. The same offer can still show later.
How to check yours
Method 1 — Load it fresh, on desktop
catches the obvious cases immediately.
- 1.Load your site fresh in a private/incognito browser window.
- 2.Note anything blocking the screen in the first few seconds.
Method 2 — Load it fresh, as mobile
the penalty is weighted heavily toward mobile, so this is the version that actually matters most.
- 1.Open Chrome, right-click any page, click “Inspect,” then click the small phone/tablet icon near the top-left to switch to mobile view.
- 2.Reload the page fresh, and note anything blocking the screen in the first few seconds.
How to fix what you find
A promotional pop-up (offer, newsletter sign-up)
delay it until someone's scrolled or spent genuine time on the page, or remove it entirely.
A cookie consent or legal banner
Google exempts these from the penalty when they're reasonably sized and easy to dismiss — just make sure it's a single tap to close and doesn't cover the whole screen.
Keeping on top of it
New pop-ups get added by marketing tools often, usually without anyone realising the SEO cost — worth a quick visual check whenever a new one's added.
How Reyse handles this
Done With You
we flag anything problematic and tell you how to adjust it.
Done For You
we review and adjust this directly whenever anything new is added.