Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention.
Setting up the wrong kind of age verification gate, or doing it incorrectly, can hurt your SEO.
Possibly the best way is that you would identify Google’s bot(s) and not serve up the notice to Googlebot. If that’s not possible for you, you can also set up a popup that shows the first time someone visits within a certain period of time and then not show it on subsequent visits. So Google would get it the first time, and maybe not get it again for another 10 days or 30 days.
Here’s Google’s complete guidelines on mobile-friendly pop-ups:
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on
I’d like to suggest you to take a look to this article in order to set a perfect pop-up without hurting your SEO.
Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Thank you.
In fact, I prefer to put a warning such as “This website only allows 21+” on the header or footer of the website, rather than using pop-up windows.
I don’t know if this will be penalized by Google.
Which way do you recommend me to use?
Hello,
Google doesn’t have any ranking signal for over 18 products yet and this can be done however you prefer. But the best you can ensure is it’s not harming the user experience.
Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Thank you.
Hello,
We’re glad that we could address your concern.
Please feel free to reach out to us again in case you need any other assistance.
We are here to help.
Thank you.
