As you all know, on January 10, 2017 the Google mobile intrusive interstitial penalty is coming and as we explained, this has some folks concerned due to religious obligations.

John Mueller in Google hangout from late last week talked about the topic at the 39:40 mark and said around the 42 minute mark that Google would treat religious interstitials like they would legal or policy interstitials – so they should not get penalized.

John said, “we talked with that the team that is doing this, specifically with regards to to this kind of situation and we would for the most part we will treat these type of in interstitial the same as we would any other kind of legal or kind of policy interstitial. So this wouldn’t be seen as an ad interstitial.”

Here is the video embed:

Here is the full transcript:

So those who have these shabbat interstitials should not have to worry too much but Google does recommend you serve a 503 status code to be safe. Safe with the interstitial penalty and safe with Google indexing the wrong content.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.