Google has recently announced that they will introduce an ad-blocker feature to their Chrome browser from the beginning of 2018, with ‘test’ versions of the ad-blocker already appearing in pre-release versions of the Chrome Canary app for Android.

This may seem like a drastic step that will greatly impact those that rely on advertisements, however, Google has taken precautions to ensure that only those advertisements that could be considered ‘intrusive’ will be blocked.
These intrusive ads often lead internet users to block all ads and consequently affect all advertisements annoying or not. A member of the Coalition for Better Ads, Google’s ad-blocker will only target advertisements that the coalition considers ‘unacceptable’. Unacceptable ads could include:
> Pop-up ads
> Presitital ads (those that block content on a page with the advertisement)
> Flashing animations
> Ads that require a countdown before you can dismiss it
> Full-screen rollovers
> Auto-playing videos
> Web pages with more than 30% ad density
Ultimately, the ad-blockers will improve the user-experience of many websites for users across the globe. On top of this, without intrusive ads, pages will load more quickly, therefore, improving overall site speed.
User experience is an essential part to ranking highly on Google search engines, this encompasses all things:
> Keywords – you want to ensure people searching for a particular page find what they’re looking for
> Mobile usability – with an ever-increasing number of users accessing websites using mobile devices, web pages must be clear and navigable on mobile.
> Site speed – research has found that users will only wait on average 3 seconds for a page to load, therefore your site must be quick in loading to retain visitors
> Targeting pop-up ads – this is particularly relevant on mobile with pop-up ads that don’t allow you to see the rest of a page; this update was rolled out earlier this year and has seen many sites move down in ranking if a site has ‘annoying’ popups.
Need to prepare your site for future Google updates? Get in touch with Entyce for more details of how we can help.