Pop-ups ok for SEO?

[seoman10]

Are unintrusive pop-ups okay or is Google likely to impose a black mark?

I'm not talking about making people stay on the site, just talking about little one corner pop-up for a special offer.

An example would be an embedded live chat pop-up.

Have you had any experience?

[donford]

Hi,

They shouldn't hurt the rankings directly. However, the user experience from my point of view would be horrible. No matter how tasteful they are done, they always annoy me. I just finished up writing a SEO article this morning, and I remember vividly advising against this.

Hope it helps,

Don

[CleverPhD]

Agreed.  No SEO ding directly, but as donford said, be careful that you don't mess up UX.  One thing to be aware of.  If you use a 3rd party to host the pop-up, it can slow down the site if the script blocks the downloading of other assets on your page.  You could then have a page speed issue that can indirectly cause issues with SEO.