Last Friday GDPR touched down and I am sure over the past week, you received hundreds of GDPR related emails mostly from companies updating their privacy policies. But you probably also have been running into web sites that show notices about their new privacy policies and GDPR compliance changes when you first visit the site. Sometimes those notices are small banners at the top or side or footer of their web site and sometimes those notices are pop ups or something more intrusive.

How would these impact SEO and your Google search rankings? Well, Google doesn’t have any exception for the intrusive mobile interstitial penalty for GDPR requirements. You do not need to use an intrusive interstitial to notify your web site visitors about any GDPR changes to your site.

John Mueller from Google answered the question on yesterday’s Google webmaster hangout at the 37:55 mark into the video. He basically said you can use pop ups but make sure they are not intrusive, make sure the content is still visible to GoogleBot and make sure to test it with the mobile-friendly testing tool. Here is what John said:

Here is the video embed at the start time:

Forum discussion at YouTube.