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Avoid intrusive interstitials and dialogsIntrusive interstitials and dialogs are page elements that obstruct users' view of the content, usually for promotional purposes. Interstitials are overlays on the whole page and dialogs are overlays only on a part of the page, sometimes also obfuscating the underlying content.
Websites often need to show dialogs for various reasons; however, interrupting users with intrusive interstitials may frustrate them and erode their trust in your website.
Intrusive dialogs and interstitials make it hard for Google and other search engines to understand your content, which may lead to poor search performance. Equally, if users find your site hard to use, they are unlikely to want to visit those websites again, including through search engines.
Create unintrusive dialogsCreating unintrusive dialogs means that users can access your content without being interrupted by a dialog. This applies to all kinds of promotional dialogs, including app install prompts. Following these best practices will help your users have a good experience on your site, in addition to helping Google Search understand the content and structure of your site.
Instead of full page interstitials, use banners that take up only a small fraction of the screen to grab your users' attention. Banners ensure that users and search engines can get to the content as soon as they land on the page.
These can be implemented in various ways. For example, for app install banners, you can use a browser-supported banner, such as Smart App Banners for Safari or in-app install experience for Chrome. Another option is to create an HTML banner, similar to a typical small advertisement, that links to the correct app store for download. You can reuse these small containers for other kinds of notifications, such as newsletter sign-up prompts.
Use common librariesMany CMSes have plugins that create standard dialogs and interstitials for the most common use cases, such as newsletter sign-up prompts. For example, if you are using WordPress, search for "newsletter signup wordpress". Using such plugins can be helpful for Google, other search engines, and the internet in general, as the plugin developers can deploy improvements at scale.
Avoid common mistakesUnless they're legally mandatory, avoid the following common mistakes when designing a dialog or interstitial to help Google Search crawl and understand your content:
Certain sites are required to show an interstitial due to the kind of content they are publishing. For example, a casino site may need to show an age gate, which is a type of interstitial where the user must provide their age before accessing the content.
Mandatory interstitials are exempted from the guidelines discussed in this document; however, if possible, we recommend that sites follow these best practices:
For content behind a mandatory age gate for adult users, we recommend allowing Googlebot to crawl your content without triggering the age gate. You can do this by verifying Googlebot requests and serving the content without age gate.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-06-17 UTC.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-06-17 UTC."],[[["Intrusive interstitials and dialogs negatively impact user experience and search engine understanding of your website's content."],["Prioritize unintrusive dialogs and utilize banners instead of full-page interstitials for promotions and notifications to ensure content accessibility."],["Leverage common libraries or plugins for creating standard dialogs and interstitials, as these often incorporate best practices and scalability."],["Avoid obscuring the entire page with interstitials or redirecting users to separate pages for consent, unless legally required."],["For mandatory interstitials, ensure content is still crawlable by search engines and avoid redirecting all incoming requests to a single page."]]],["The core message is to avoid intrusive interstitials and dialogs, as they obstruct content, frustrate users, and harm search performance. Instead, use unintrusive banners for promotional purposes, including app install prompts. Leverage common CMS plugins to deploy dialogs efficiently. Avoid obscuring the entire page or redirecting users for consent. For mandatory interstitials, ensure the content is overlaid and avoid redirecting all URLs. For age-restricted content, allow Googlebot to crawl without triggering the age gate.\n"]]
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