An age gate on every page hides the hours visitors came for and fails on phones. Google exempts age checks from its pop-up change, but ask once, remember the answer and show the hours anyway.

The site

A family winery on a bench above a lake, with a tasting room open daily from May to October and on winter weekends. It sells wine online for delivery in BC and runs a wine club.

Every page of its website opens behind a full-screen panel asking for the visitor's date of birth: a day, a month and a year, each picked from a drop-down list, then an enter button.

Answer it and the panel disappears. Click through to the tasting room page and it appears again.

On a phone the panel is wider than the screen, and the enter button sits below the visible area.

The inference a visitor makes

Most visitors want something simple: whether the tasting room is open today, how to get there, whether a group of eight can come on Saturday.

The site's first act is to ask for their birth date. Its second, on the next page, is to ask again.

A visitor concludes that the site is broken, or that the winery has put its own caution ahead of their question.

On a phone, a visitor who cannot reach the button concludes something simpler: the site does not work. In wine country the next tasting room is usually a few minutes down the same road, and its site opens.

What the gate is hiding

The first costs the most. Someone in the parking lot at the winery next door, checking whether this one is open, will not pick a birth year from a list of ninety to find out.

Why it asks on every page

An age gate is meant to remember the answer, usually in a small cookie the browser keeps. This one sets the cookie but checks on every page load without ever reading it.

Visitors also rarely arrive at the home page. A search for tasting room hours lands them on an inner page, and the gate meets them wherever they come in.

Even a well-built gate asks again when a visitor browses privately or blocks cookies. This one asks everyone, every time: three pages, three answers.

The panel on a phone

The panel was designed on a desktop screen and given a fixed width. On a phone it runs past the right edge, and the enter button falls below the bottom of the screen.

Because the panel is fixed in place, scrolling moves the page underneath it, not the panel. Zooming out is the only way to reach the button, and few people think of it.

The drop-down lists add friction too. On a phone each opens a spinning wheel, and the year list starts at 2016, so a visitor born in the sixties scrolls back five decades.

For a visitor who cannot get past it, the site has no content at all. An age check that keeps out adults is doing the opposite of its job.

What search engines see

The gate is built as a redirect. Every visitor, including Google's crawler, is sent first to a separate age page and only then to the content they asked for.

Google cannot pick a birth date, so for many pages the version it records is the age page. Search for the winery's tasting room and the description under the result is the gate's own wording, where the hours should be.

A gate laid over the real page, rather than replacing it, leaves the content underneath for search engines to read. The difference is invisible to the owners and obvious in the results.

Google's pop-up change and its exceptions

On August 23 Google announced that from January 10, pages that cover their content with intrusive pop-ups when someone arrives from a search on a phone may rank lower.

It listed exceptions: notices shown because of a legal obligation, with age verification named as an example, login screens for private content and small banners that are easy to dismiss.

So this gate is unlikely to be what the change targets.

But the exception concerns ranking only. It does nothing for the visitor who cannot find the button, or for a result that shows the gate instead of the hours.

A worked example

The owners noticed at the tasting room counter. Visitors said the website would not let them in, and tour operators phoned to ask winter hours that were on the site all along.

The cause was the combination: a gate that never read its own answer, a panel built for a desktop screen, and a redirect that showed Google the gate instead of the page.

The rebuilt gate asks one question, whether the visitor is nineteen or older, with yes and no buttons sized for a thumb. It appears once per visit, remembers the answer for a month and fits any phone screen.

It overlays the page instead of redirecting. The panel itself shows the hours, address and phone number beneath the question, so a visitor who only wanted those gets them without answering.

The shop confirms the buyer's age again at checkout, and deliveries need an adult's signature, which is where the check means something.

The counter-case within the site

Some parts of the site do warrant a check. The shop and the wine club sign-up sell alcohol, and confirming age there, and on delivery, is friction worth having.

If the winery's licence or the advertising rules it follows call for a gate across the whole site, keep it, but make it ask once, fit every phone and carry the hours.

A gate is not the problem. A gate that forgets, fails on phones and shows Google its own wording is.

Ask once, in the right place, and let every visitor see the hours whatever they answer.

What to change

  1. Ask once per visit and remember the answer.
  2. Replace the birth date with yes and no buttons.
  3. Fit the panel to the smallest phone screen.
  4. Overlay the page instead of redirecting to it.
  5. Put hours and the phone number on the panel.
  6. Confirm age again at checkout and delivery.
  7. Search for the winery on a phone afterwards.

Step four is the one owners cannot see from the inside, because the site looks the same to them either way. Only the search results show what Google recorded.

Another site that loses visitors on its very first screen is taken apart in a contractor site on a free subdomain.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google's pop-up change apply to age gates?

Google named age verification among the notices shown for a legal obligation, which are exempt from the ranking change due January 10. Exempt from ranking does not mean harmless to visitors.

Why does an age gate appear on every page?

Usually because the answer is never remembered, or is checked without reading the cookie that stores it. Visitors from search also land on inner pages and meet the gate wherever they arrive.

Can Google read pages behind an age gate?

If the gate overlays the real page, usually yes. If every visitor is redirected to a separate age page, Google can end up recording the gate, and its wording appears in search results.

What should visitors see without answering?

Hours, the address, the phone number and directions. They are facts about a place, they are what most visitors came for, and they can sit on the panel itself.

Is a date of birth better than yes or no?

No. A typed birth date proves no more than a button, and the lists are slow on phones. Real confirmation belongs at checkout and on delivery.

Should a winery remove its age gate entirely?

Not necessarily. Keep it where your licence or rules call for it, ask once per visit, make it fit every phone, overlay rather than redirect, and show the hours on it.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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