are interstitial ads bad for search engine ranking?

[zach]

Hi

Adbrite offers interstitial ads now. These are ads that appear full page, when a visitor visits your site. They get an option to 'continue to site', which they must click to see your website.

I was wondernig whether tehse ads might hurt your search engine ranking (SERP). They definately cover your whole page, so if a search engine crawled your site, would it ONLY see the ad and not your site. If this is the case, you might lose out in search relevancy and keyword density.

Does anyone know about this?

Zach

[Paula62]

I don't exactly know the answer, but I do know that google adsense is abotu to begin testing the use of interstitials, among other types of ads. My sense of it is that if google is going to use them, then they're not going to penalize sites.

[Darkneoboi]

I would try it since if google is going to start using them then they problably have a way to see past the pages. So I would just start using them.

[shaunapple]

I don't think they have a major effect on ranking.

[triumph]

This is a very good question. I might use them more internally to go from page to page though then as access to the site.

I suspect the would not appreciate cloaking them, but maybe there is a way to deal with it. Not really sure how they work from a technology standpoint to make an educated guess.

[andreww38]

you could do a split test between two of your websites/blogs and see how it goes

[Ladybecklyn]

Personally I do not like these types of ads. I have a very slow internet connection and it takes time to load these ads and I lose time at the site I WANT to be on. I would rather there be ads in the margins so that I can look at them if I want or if something catches my eye. You know what I mean. It is kinda off topic of whether you can see it on searches but just keep it in mind when you make such a decision. How will this affect the smoothness of my site and my viewers attitudes of the site.