How good/bad the exit intent pop-ups? What is Google's perspective?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

We have launched the exit intent pop-ups on our website where a pop-up will appear when the visitor is about to leave the website. This will trigger when the mouse is moved to the top window section; as an attempt by the visitor to close the window. We see a slight ranking drop post this pop-up launch. As the pop-up is appearing just before someone leaves the website; does this making Google to see as if the user left because of the pop-up and penalizing us? What is your thoughts and suggestions on this?

Thanks

[Xiano]

Google's John Mueller has stated that exit intent pop-ups do not attract a Google penalty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=746&v=gS4_JH-QqSg
"What we’re looking for is really interstitials that show up on the interaction between the search click and going through the page and seeing the content. So that’s kind of the place we’re looking for those interstitials. What you do afterwards like if someone clicks on stuff within your website or closes the tab or something like that then that’s kind of between you and the user."

Google won't be monitoring the user's full behaviour on your site beyond the initial bounce/non-bounce (at least as far as the search arm is considered, Analytics is, of course, different!), e.g. they won't see that x happened that caused (or appeared to cause) the user to leave.