Are pop-unders bad for SEO?

[TomNYC]

Hi all,

I run a travel site that specializes in hotel bookings. We're working with a third-party advertiser to launch a pop-under unit when someone searches for hotels on our site. (This unit is of the "also try your search on these competing sites" variety.)

I'm worried, however, that this might affect our SEO, especially in light of this on their site: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721313?hl=en

Would Google even see these pop-unders? (Are pop-unders treated the same as pop-overs?) And, if so, would G see them as unwanted and treat them as a nuisance? Could it lead to negative SEO consequences?

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

Tom

[EGOL]

Are they bad for SEO?    It will be hard to get a reliable answer unless it comes straight from Google.

I can say that a lot fewer sites are using them today as compared to a few years ago - at least the sites that I encounter.

I had some pages on one of my sites launching pop-unders a couple years ago and that site had a Panda problem, but I can't say that the pop-unders are what caused it because the site also had a lot of articles that were republished in cooperation with university news offices.   As part of cleaning up the site, I removed the pop-unders and the site is now ranking better than ever.

I think pop-unders are a bit risky and if you are not making buckets of money from them I would remove them.

[PatrickDelehanty]

I agree with EGOL here.

I would look at it more from the usability standpoint and if it provides value for the user. I am not too fond of them so I never recommend them, but that's really up to you and if it appeals to your audience.

You can test with VWO or Optimizely and see the engagement based on the data collected and go from there.

Hope this helps - good luck!