Pop-ups/unders, exits... do they affect indexing/SEO efforts?

[dogboy]

I've been thinking hard about how to engage the user right from the landing page with a 'pop-up'.  I'm not thinking an ad, I'm thinking a call to action, like logging in with an OpenID, that might help personalize their experience on the site.

I haven't added pop-up code to my pages in ages.  I stopped when I moved out of adult and needed to get into human reviewed directories. There are lots of ways of doing this, but I was wondering if there was a preferable method, in terms of not screwing up the bots, or your ranking.

Or am I just trying solve a problem that doesn't exist? Has anyone had some bad experience with it tripping filters of some sort?

[4Eyes]

Its not an answer to your question exactly, but I am doing a bit of creative pop-upping and it is going OK with no ranking issues.

I originally did it to prove a point for a client - he said that one of the high ranking satellite sites we had built was only sending poor quality traffic to his main site. I told him that this was because the phrase it was ranking for was a phrase with a far lower 'commercial intent' than the rest of the traffic he got.

To prove it, we installed a pop-up that asks the visitor whether they want information on the subject, or wish to buy the product.
If the click buy they go straight to the main site shopping cart, if they click 'information' they get the satellite site. I tracked the clicks and was able to illustrate that only 20% of the visitors wanted to buy - but that when they were passed to the main site, the conversion rate was great. We were, in effect, just selecting out the 'commercial intent' guys earlier in the process, so overall conversions were up (YMMV depending on market etc)

Worked well in practice, and there have been no ranking issues so far.

If you want to see the site DB, pm me

[Rumbas]

I've been running both Awebers lightbox pop-up and PopUp domination plugin and afaik there has been no problems in indexing etc. It will increase the sign ups for newsletters in a huge way.

[dogboy]

Ah, thanks boys... I forgot to get notified and missed your responses.

Well, this sounds promising then. Ive been trying to think up some new spins on old tricks and this one looks like it has some life left.