Pop-ups that cover the page: Crawl Audit check 109

Short answer: a pop-up that covers the page as soon as someone arrives gets in the way of what they came for, and Google's page experience guidance asks you to avoid it. Check 109 warns when it finds markup that looks like a pop-up or interstitial.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Warning: an element whose class or id contains "popup" or "interstitial", with the count.
• Pass: none.

It looks at names in the HTML, not at what appears on screen. A pop-up with a different class name isn't seen, and a hidden one that never opens is counted. Check how the page behaves on a phone.

What Google says

• "Instead of full page interstitials, use banners that take up only a small fraction of the screen to grab your users' attention."
• "Don't obscure the entire page with interstitials."
• "Mandatory interstitials are exempted from the guidelines discussed in this document", Google's example being an age check on a gambling site. When Google first announced this in 2016, it also listed interstitials for "cookie usage or for age verification" as not affected.
• Google's page experience self-check asks: "Do your pages avoid using intrusive interstitials?"

Better alternatives

• A small banner at the top or bottom that can be dismissed easily.
• An offer shown inline, part-way down the content.
• A pop-up only after a clear action, such as clicking "Get the guide".
• Never a pop-up the moment a visitor arrives from search.

Sources

• Google Search Central, Avoid intrusive interstitials and dialogs (updated 10 December 2025) and Understanding page experience, checked 6 October 2026.
• Google Search Central blog, Helping users easily access content on mobile, 23 August 2016.