The short answer: Popups are not an issue for newsletter and promotion based signups that are for the specific brand’s website.
Long answer: There are two official Google communications we recommend on this topic. The more recent communication from 2021 addressed the topic directly. The original guidance, published in 2016, specifically addressed "interstitials" and interrupting the search experience. This was misinterpreted and exaggerated by marketers for attention, and has since been deemed a non-issue by one of the top authorities who runs this department at Google.
A 2021 question that was answered by John Muller from Google, directly addressing how Google’s SPAM team is not concerned with popups, especially for something like temporary promotion
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sites-can-safely-display-pop-ups-on-temporary-basis/393563/
Link to the official google video at the exact moment in the video popups are address:
Google’s Search Console page on “Avoid intrusive interstitials and dialogs” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/avoid-intrusive-interstitials
Background on the Google Search Console page above: The “interstitial penalty” was rolled out in 2016 by google
(https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on) which is mainly what the above article covers but in a much toned down fashion. This penalty is more concerned with interrupting the flow of traffic from Google to your page.
You may remember the Forbes interstitial which truly was annoying and an example of something that could impact SEO as it “interrupted the flow of traffic”
At this point in time (currently 2023) we, Amped, do not see promotional popups that are specific to the current site as a significant or even noticeable threat to SEO.
Anecdotally, and from our experience, we have worked with hundreds of brands, aggregately 100’s of millions of pageviews, directly on this and in running popups on mobile and desktop for email and sms capture as well as on entrance, we have yet to find any direct correlation with SEO and popups. In fact, most brands we work with are growing, continue to grow, and point to customer acquisition as a key driver in their growth journey.
Options for Popups and SEO
Now armed with the background on the issue, ultimately it’s your decision. If you choose to be more careful with your popups, you can easily configure that with Amped.
Options:
1.) Keep running popups on entrance and exit (This is what most brands do)
2.) Only conditionally hide popups on the first pageview for mobile devices.
3.) Only run popups on exit
How to hide popups from Google traffic, for mobile traffic, on their first pageview
1.) Create a new Segment in Amped called “Google Traffic Mobile on 1st Pageview” Segment in Amped
2.) In your new Segment use the following conditions
Device type is Phone or Tablet
Number of pageviews in session is less than 2
Traffic source is Google (paid or organic)
3.) In your Campaigns you want to not show to visitors from Google on their first pageview on mobile - Add a Start Condition to your Campaign of “Is not in Segment” and pick the Segment you just created, in this case “Google Traffic Mobile on 1st Pageview”
This will make sure that this Campaign does not start for visitors who come from Google and are on a mobile device and have not viewed more than 1 pageview.
Additionally target these visitors from Google on Mobile 1st Pageview with a non-popup sized campaign
If you have implemented the Segment above as a Start Condition on your main Campaigns using the “Google Traffic Mobile on 1st Pageview” Segment, you could consider using this Segment as a Start Condition to show visitors a non-popup style Campaign that covered less than 25% of the page, and show them this campaign, until they have browsed more than 1 pageview in the session.
1.) Find a Template in Amped that is a bar, slideout, or notification style Campaign and create a new Campaign
2.) On the Start Conditions of this new Campaign, set the Start Condition to be “Is in Segment” and select “Google Traffic Mobile on 1st Pageview” as the Segment.
3.) Be sure to set the “Safe Display” settings to “Autonomous” so that it is not considered a main popup for coordination of a later popup
4.) Give this new Campaign a name of something like ““Google Mobile Traffic Campaign”
5.) In the Design of the Campaign you just created, you can capture emails or sms directly from inside that Campaign OR you can setup a Button that uses an Action of Open another Campaign - which could then open you main popup Campaign.