Does Google penalize successful pages that start using pop-unders?

[JohnKC]

I have a pretty successful page on one of my sites that gets around 350 unique visitors from Google each day, but affiliate sales from it are pretty bad.

The main product I promote in this page offers pop up and pop under options that I’m afraid to use on this page because I don’t want Google to decide that this page is bad for it’s users because of the pop-up/under.

Am I afraid for nothing or am I right about this?

Are pops good for business anyway? The pop page contains an opt-in option and it is very tempting to sign up for the juicy information.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

 

[Linda Buquet]

You know I've never seen anything about Google's stance regarding pops, but I don't think average Joe surfer likes pops. I'm sure some people use them successfully though or they would not still be around.

Sorry I didn't exactly answer your Q but I think the answer may be?
only the big G knows for sure!

 

[JohnKC]

Thank you Linda.

I know that people hate pop-UPS, but pop-unders are (in my opinion) a little less disgusting...
I AM willing to try the pop under, but I don't want to ruin my 10K visitors a month I get from the big G (big G means Google or God? Maybe Google is our god for us seo people...)

I want to try it because I get maybe 1 lead (sign-up) a day and if I force 350 people a day who are in a way interested (some more, some less) in this subject to see this really well designed page then maybe it'll be 10 leads a day... maybe more... (Or maybe less, who knows? Maybe G...)

Please, does anyone else know about this from experience?

 

[djbaxter]

No, speaking for most of the planet I can affirm that popunders are just as odious as popups, popovers, and poparounds, and only slightly less offensive than music or videos that start playing without permission. It's really a pretty simple rule: Dont do anything unexpected and uninvited on a web page or you're going to see a large percentage of as-fast-as-possible click-aways.

And seriously, if you8 believe that you are going to increase sales by annoying people, you are sadly mistaken. The only way you have even a faint hope of doing that is if you have a monopoly on a highly sought after product and I don't believe those criteria are met by any affiliate.

As to your question about Google, I have never heard of a penalty for popups or popunders unless they contain malware or are identified as containing malware. I don't think spiders like Googlebot will even know the popup or popunder is there in most cases, since I expect they are generally scripted.

 

[backbowls]

From a usability standpoint, minstrel is obviously correct if you want to have a longstanding successful website with a lot of repeat traffic.

For Adwords landing pages, popups aren't allowed according to the AdWords official Guidelines. I'm a new member, so I can't post the link - but just google AdWords and popups and you'll see an AdWords blog entry from 2006 addressing the AdWords official guidelines towards popups.

It would make sense that if the technique isn't looked very highly upon in AdWords, that they should also have the capability to detect pop-ups and somehow penalize the site in organic search as well. Good luck finding official policy on that though.

 

[JohnKC]

Well, I've decided to perform a makeover to the page (without touching what Googlebot can read) and optimize it to convert better.
The problem with the page was that it was a test to see how high and fast I can get in Google - an experimen that worked really good but it's design was not so good...
(I can still go higher. The page is ranked at about 7-10 in the first page for it's main keyphrases.)

Thanks for your replies and wish me luck...



J.