Any Annoying Pop Up May Count As Primary Content

We have all heard and noticed those annoying pop ups and we know that they are not the favorites of Google’s webmaster analysts team. Last month Mihai Aperghis asked a very interesting question:

Googlebot might give higher priority to the content on the pop-up instead of the content behind it?

This happened in a Google Hangout on Google+ and John Mueller immediately gave a positive answer, followed by his point of view:

I think, just from a usability point of view, if you put this in front of a user before they’re even able to see what you offer, it’s probably counterproductive, in that you’re not really getting the most value out of that. On the other hand, if you can tell that someone is already browsing your website, and they’re looking at stuff, or maybe they’re reading through a longer page, then maybe it makes sense to let them know, hey, if you really like this, is a great way to kind of keep in touch, stay up to date with the new changes. And maybe that makes sense to kind of, like you said, delay it into the session.

In the end of the communication John says that this situation can definitely happen which is more than enough for the SEO community to have it in mind.