Hello folks :)...Is pop-up a good idea for city selection from SEO perspective?

[Furseo]

I manage an e-commerce website which asks a new user for his/her city by throwing up a pop-up. Please check yourself by visiting www.furlenco.com.

Will this pop-up have any effect on the seo?

[Tenlo]

It should not have any effect on SEO.  From a UX perspective you may want to see if you can just detect their location instead of interrupting their consumption of your site with a pop up.

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Furseo

I would say that it has the potential to affect your SEO as you are not able to close the pop up without selecting a city. I do not live in any of the cities listed so I can't navigate your website. Google will penalise sites which it deems are obscured behind an intrusive pop up.

You can read more about interstitial ads and pop ups here: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html

If you want to ask then have a pop up that can be closed by the user. Having a sniffer on the site is not always a good idea as servers can be hosted in different locations to the user.

Kind Regards

Nigel