This will be good news for surfers but bad news for marketers employing this tactic – sites that display large popups as soon as a visitor loads a site could trigger the above the fold layout algorithm penalty.

“When we look at the page layout, we look at what we crawl with Googlebot,” says John Mueller in a Google Webmaster Central office hours, “and since Googlebot doesn’t use any cookies, we will probably see that ad every time we visit.  So that’s something we would take into account there.”

“But showing them a big banner from the beginning is something we’ll probably index or we’ll use for the page layout algorithm.”

John Mueller does give a great suggestion on how marketers should utilize popups so that they don’t affect the page layout algo.  Because Googlebot doesn’t use cookies, he suggests not showing the popup until a visitor’s second visit to the website.  Otherwise, Googlebot will see the popup every visit, which could impact the page layout algo on the site.

So bottom line, pop-ups won’t trigger the page layout algo penalty IF you set a cookie that will mean the pop-up is displayed only on subsequent visits.

Hat tip to Marie Haynes, of HIS Web Marketing.