New Google Toolbar, thoughts on pop-up blocker!

First off it's magic, I love it Now lets look at it as a site owner’s point of view.

If you have any pop-ups or pop-unders that are auto triggered then they will not load. Lets take a popular thing that many sites do, to pop-up a promotion.

We can take Amazon.co.uk as an example but it applies to all sites doing the same thing.

When you visit amazon.co.uk it pop-ups up an offer for £3 off your first offer.. Not with new Google Toolbar it won’t, it makes the little noise to say it's blocked a pop-up.. Now you can press the button to allow you to see the pop-up that it blocked but I can’t see to many people doing that.

So what that means to merchants and affiliates is, you can no longer pop-up promotions or join my mailing list in pop-ups and expect people to see it.

Truth be told I don't think many members of the public will have this toolbar but Google has the power to promote it's bar, so if they did do that, it could get very popular, very quick.

popup blockers are all over the place, there are a great many pieces of software that do this for you - though many do not offer the neat ability to search google while browsing and see the pagerank of individual pages on sites.

Adware is targeting google more and more. Certian software triggers targeted popups when people search google and I suppose google want to put a stop to this.

at the end of the day - popup blockers have been around for ages, if you have something you really want people to read (like a voucher or something) dont put it in a popup.

I agree with you Marc, if the offer/promotion/boring newsletter is THAT good, then put it slap-bang in the top-middle of every page on your site, preferably as an SSI, so that it can be registered by cookie, then not shown again.

I agree with Marc also, but because I agree doesn’t stop merchants from doing it. I often have to link to merchants and say look for offer on pop-up window, ok not too often but it happens

The worst implications from an affiliate perspective are with merchants that pay on lead (the lead being captured via email submission to a mailing list, for example) that is only accessible via a popup on the homepage.

This is not a new issue, and I've previously asked merchants to change this on the basis of the fact that their affiliate program will convert at a much lower rate due to visitors with popup blocking not being exposed to the function.

Response are mixed, with some merchants integrating the function back into the main site, and some claiming me to be the devil for my anti merchant behaviour (Brand awareness campaigns, perhaps?).

In summary, if you're worried about the impact of any popup blocking tool, and as good general practice anyway, check the merchant site to see what triggers a payment. If it's in a popup, account for a possible lower conversion rate in your thinking.

i stopped using pop-ups a long time ago for promotions, exactly for this reason.

IIRC, you're made aware of when a popup is blocked by the Google Toolbar.. as such, if you see one being trapped on a site such as Amazon, you can take a view that it may not be the irritating blighters you find on lesser sites, and choose to see what the popup is.

All in, it's excellent. It's trapped 40 popups today !!

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you can take a view that it may not be the irritating blighters you find on lesser sites, and choose to see what the popup is[/quote]

You and I might take that view as knowledgable web users, but the average surfer will probably click on No just because they've seen so many cr*p pop-ups in the past.

The popup blocker is an excellent function for those people who know when and why to use it, but for most people it prevents them from viewing important information as well as advertising shat. (IE it will, as mentioned stop an Amazon or Euroffice with popup 'offers' as well as the' internet washer' ad.)

I stopped using popups for 'compulsary' functions long ago, because it is tiresom telling people to disable their 'anti popup' functions before they used the site, (most people don't bother to email support, they give up).

I think the best way forward is to, as mentioned, introduce any offers as the customers progresses through the sale. It is quite logical and normal to say read an offer of 10% off or £3 free from your first order and not 'action' that 'deal' until further normal interaction with the website occours. (why popup a 10% off deal and ask the customer to add it to their cart, before they have even chosen to shop?). In my view it would be easier to introduce it either in the wording of the advertising that brought that lead or use a big flashy button in the first paragraph of you page Then add it to the order automatically when the customer starts to shop.

And there are always layers or i F r a m e s to use these days as well.

The rest of the google bar I find is very usefull, with a blog button not far away. Its also adisable to 'pagerank' your own site by clicking the smiley face. And pagerank any page with a ligit link back to your site - The same goes with the alexa toolbar - if you have a new url or website you can use the alexa toolbar to 'submit' your website alongside any links that you feel are relative. Do this correctlt and you will move up the pagerank (hyperthetically, never tried it, was on the DGM2 website somewhere - Thanks)

Barry
www.the-jigsaw.co.uk

[EyeOfTheTiger]

I've got a few links that trigger pop-unders which google blocks for me, which I can understand that's what its meant to do.

It's silly I reckon though for me to ask if there is a way that I can automatically disable this for users so that my popunders get actioned isn't it ??

Thanks

Mike

[Itchy]

Originally Posted by EyeOfTheTiger It's silly I reckon though for me to ask if there is a way that I can automatically disable this for users so that my popunders get actioned isn't it ??

Ohhhhh Yes

Excellent news that i cant stand sodding pop ups or unders or sideways or anything but then again i use firefox so i dont get them and like someone said it does hide info but when i press on a link and nothing happens then its just old firefox doing its job so i temp allow the site to pop up job done

[Mogga]

I don't like the google popup blocker. I did at first but found it increasibgly annoying as it seemed to decide to block links I'd clicked on.