The intrusive-interstitial guidance still applies; it did not relax into permission to use pop-ups freely. As of mid-2026, the working understanding is that interstitials which block the main content on mobile, especially the pop-up that covers the page right after a searcher arrives from search, remain a negative page-experience factor, while interstitials that are legally required or otherwise reasonable are fine. The verdict is that it still applies for content-blocking interstitials. Because Google has folded older standalone guidance into broader page-experience messaging over time and its exact current stance is not always restated clearly, treat this as the current understanding and confirm the latest documentation before you rely on it.
The claim to reject is that interstitial penalties are gone. They were never a dramatic, sitewide penalty to begin with; the original guidance described a relatively light treatment aimed at a specific harm, content hidden behind a pop-up the moment a mobile visitor lands. That harm has not changed, and the underlying principle, that a searcher who clicks a result should be able to see the content they came for, is exactly the kind of thing the page-experience framework continues to care about. So even where the named guidance is less prominently advertised than it once was, the behavior it discouraged is still discouraged.
The nuance that has always been part of this is worth keeping. Not every overlay is intrusive. Interstitials that are legally required (age verification, cookie or privacy consent where mandated) and ones that use a reasonable amount of space rather than burying the content are explicitly acceptable. The problem is specifically the large, content-blocking pop-up on mobile entry from search, not every modal or banner. The distinction is between an overlay that interrupts access to what was promised and one that sits politely alongside it.
For your own pages, avoid any interstitial that blocks the main content on mobile right after a visitor arrives from search, and move email captures, app prompts, and offers to formats that do not hide the content, such as inline elements or modest banners. Keep only the overlays you genuinely need (legal consent and the like) at a reasonable size, and re-check Google’s current page-experience documentation periodically, since the framing of this guidance has shifted before.