But it will be a direct factor when it is deployed. For now, what I'm saying is that users might be so put off by aggressive popups and interstitials that they quickly return to search results (resulting in extremely low dwell time). And as I've said a thousand times before, extremely low dwell time (overall) is a strong signal to Google that users didn't find what they wanted (or didn't enjoy their site experience). When analyzing
sites negatively impacted by Google's quality updates, I've seen many examples of sites with aggressive popups and other interstitials that completely inhibit the user experience (desktop and mobile) . For some sites, the annoyance levels were through the roof. Now fax number list take that frustration and extrapolate it over many users accessing the site, over a long period of time, and you can see how bad things could be, quality-wise. Then combine that with other low quality issues and Ectoplasm levels increase.
Not good, to say the least. It's also important to note that Googlebot might end up seeing the popup as your main content. Yes, that means the amazing content you created will be placed below the popup, and Googlebot might see that popup as your main content. Here's a video from Google's John Mueller explaining this. The main point here is not to hamper the user experience in any way. And aggressive popups and interstitials can absolutely do that. You must beware.