In a hangout, during the submitted Question and Answer segment, an SEO professional asked John Mueller about using a chat tool as a help service.
They have it implemented in such a way that the button is a small bubble in the bottom left corner on mobile.
This covers a bit of content, because the bubble is an overlay. Will they have a ranking problem because of the usability problem?
They asked if they should have an additional close button? The bubble is visible on all pages, also when users change pages.
John explained that he doesn’t know about the usability side. He can’t really give any advice there.
But, regarding the kinds of searches in general ranking guidelines, there are two aspects that could come into play. And it’s something where they probably have to make a judgment call on their side.
On one hand, there is the intrusive interstitial guidelines that Google has, where if you have an interstitial on your pages that is intrusive for users, then that’s something that they would recommend avoiding.
That’s part of the page experience ranking factor.
However, they don’t have a fixed number of pixels or anything like that, which they would say would be intrusive.
And John’s guess is if they have a chat bubble in the corner, then this would not be considered intrusive by their users.
The other aspect is Core Web Vitals. In particular, John thinks the LCP and perhaps the CLS could apply here.
The time it takes to load the page, and if the content shifts around while the page is loading, depending on how the chat bubble is implemented in the corner, this is possibly something that could also be playing a role.
And this is something that they can test where you turn that on and off, and you try this out in the browser, to see what the effect is there.
The effect that you see in your browser is kind of a different effect than users may see.
But, this gives you a bit of guidance.
In particular, for Core Web Vitals, they use the metrics that users see which they call “field data” in the CrUX report, or Chrome User Experience report.
If you test it yourself, then they would consider it to be lab data, and this is slightly different than from what an average user would see.
Primarily, this is due to the different connections that users have, or different devices, the capabilities, how fast they are, how much RAM they have – those types of differences. But, usually, if you turn it on and off, you will quickly see whether there is an actual difference or not.
And, if there is a difference, you would have to make a judgment call here.
Is this something I want to worry about, or not?
This happens at approximately the 34:24 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 34:24
We recently started a chat tool as a help service. The button is a small bubble in the bottom left corner on mobile, it covers a bit of content, because the bubble is an overlay. Will we have a ranking problem because of the usability problem? Should we have an additional close button? The bubble is visible on all pages also when users change pages.
John (Answer) 34:47
So I don’t know about the usability side. I can’t really give you advice there. But with regards to kind of searches general ranking guidelines there, I think there are two aspects that could come into play. And it’s something where you probably have to make a judgment call on your side. On the one hand there is the intrusive interstitial guidelines that we have, where if you have an interstitial on your pages that is intrusive for users, then that’s something that we would recommend avoiding. That’s a part of the page experience ranking factor. And it’s something where we don’t have a fixed number of pixels or anything like that, which we would say would be intrusive. And my guess is if you have a chat bubble in the corner, then that would not be considered intrusive by your users.
The other aspect is around the Core Web Vitals. So in particular, I think the the LCP and maybe the content layout shift, so the time it takes to load the page, and if the content shifts around while the page is loading. Depending on how you have implemented this kind of chat bubble in the corner, that might be something that would be playing a role. And that’s something which probably you can test where you turn that on and off, and you try it out in your browser to see what is the effect there. The effect that you see in your browser is kind of a different effect than users might see. But it gives you a bit of guidance.
So in particular, for Core Web Vitals, we use the metrics that users see, which we call field data, in the Chrome user experience report. And if you test it yourself, we would consider that to be lab data, which might be slightly different from what an average user would see. Primarily, this is due to maybe the different connections that users have, or different devices, the capabilities, how fast they are, how much RAM they have, and those kinds of differences. But usually, if you turn it on and off you, you will quickly see, Is there an actual difference or not? And if there is a difference, then you kind of have to make a judgment call.
Is this something I want to worry about or not, or maybe it’s something that you just track for a while to double check. So those are kind of the two primary things that come into play.
Another one that we’ve seen in the past, which is kind of a weird edge case, specifically around these chats, things that that sometimes run with JavaScript in the corner, is that oftentimes, they will use the page title as a way to signal that actually, there’s a chat message waiting for you. It’ll add something like a one to the page title, if some chat operator is waiting for you to kind of chat with them, essentially.
And if you use JavaScript to change the page title, then that is something that we could pick up when we render the page. And we have seen cases where suddenly all pages of a website have a one attached to the title, which comes from one of these chat tools. So that’s something to watch out for, and maybe turn off if you have a chance to kind of adjust that there.