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Google AMP and its 15 useful things

Taru M. Taru M.
Published: 27 Jul, 2021

The AMP is dead; long live AMP. It has promised faster and better HTML pages through Google AMP frameworks on mobile devices.

For 5+ years, Google said only Accelerated Mobile Pages were eligible to appear in the Google Top Stories carousel when searching on mobile (often resulting in significant spikes in traffic).

 

No more. In July 2021, Google stopped displaying the AMP label for AMP pages listed in the Google mobile search results.

And this is good news for content publishers, but the core idea of it is still useful: Make your website load faster on all devices and never give up on the users’ needs.

its components

 

15 Things to Know About it:

1. How do I View these Pages?

2. Test

3. See your Website’s AMP Status in Google Search Console

4. How Accelerated Mobile Pages Worked?

5. What is Google AMP Viewer?

6. What’s the Latest News about it?

7. cons (Internet’s POV)

8. What was Wrong with AMP? (User’s POV)

9. What was wrong with AMP? (Developers’ POV)

10. How does it Affect SEO?

11. Was AMP any Useful for an eCommerce Website?

12. Was only Google Using AMP?

13. I am using AMP. Do I need to change?

14. I have not used AMP, but will I ever need to use it?

15. Why did Google give up on AMP in Search Results?

 

Here are the 15 most useful things to know about Google AMP in its 5+ years of existence.

 

FAQ Part 1: AMP Basics

Accelerated Mobile Pages

1. How do I View these Pages?

Most important, when using AMP pages on the Desktop version of Google Chrome: And to view its URL, enable AMP browsing, click on its icon in Chrome’s Toolbar and under default, select the AMP version if available.

And once it’s done, the extension will redirect you to the AMP version of a website if there exists one.

2.  Test

It tests if your AMP page or Web Story is valid.

 

Do the AMP test here: 

Google AMP Test

3. See your Website’s AMP Status in Google Search Console

So see which AMP pages and Web Stories Google can find and crawl on your site and which pages have errors.

 

https://search.google.com/search-console/amp

4. How Accelerated Mobile Pages Worked?

How it works

 

And Google now says that while AMP itself isn’t a ranking factor (July 2021 – onwards), speed is a ranking factor for Google Search.

 

-AMP worked like this:

 

For instance when you select AMP pages in Google Search, retrieves the page from the Google AMP Cache, basically using a set of steps to ‘prerender’ the page.

 

For more, read up on AMP working here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/experience/about-amp

 

-After you click AMP content:

 

So when you click your AMP content in Google Search, AMP content may be shown in one of two ways:

 

A.  Viewer: This is the default way. And it caches your content and serves it in a user-optimized style, based on your device.

Google AMP Viewer

 

In other words, Google shows the domain of the content at the top of the Google AMP Viewer so that users understand who published it.

 

B. Signed Exchange: So this allows the browser to treat a web document as belonging to your ‘Origin’ (that is, coming from your website directly, no caching).

 

A signed exchange allows website owners to use first-party cookies to customize content and measure analytics. And their web page appears under their URL instead of the google.com/amp

5. What is Google AMP Viewer?

It is a hybrid environment where website owners can collect data about their users.

And in this viewer, the data collection by Google is governed by Google’s privacy policy.

 

Because website owners choose the behaviours and vendor integrations in their AMP page, they are responsible for fulfilling the resulting compliance obligations.

 

FAQ Part 2: AMP Now

6. What’s the Latest News about it?

Latest news about it

 

Well, when we are discussing what is Google AMP? Then we should know that Google mobile search will no longer prioritize AMP pages.

 

Starting 17th June onwards and completing sometime before the end of August 2021, Google will stop considering AMP as a factor in mobile site ranking.

 

So AMP URLs are no more required to have your site included on Google’s news app.

 

Finally, the badge on mobile search results will disappear.

7. Cons (Internet’s POV)

Why is Google AMP Bad? (Internet's POV)

 

But why AMP is bad is because accelerated mobile pages wanted to bring all news content inside Google’s garden, forcing websites to play by the rules of a very biased gardener.

 

And Google may say it was doing what it thought was best for the internet.

 

But supporters of the open web said Google AMP did away with three holy elements of the web:

 

  • The URL
  • The open web standard of good old HTML
  • The decentralization of the web

8. What was Wrong with AMP? (User’s POV)

Besides being yet another imposition from a dominant industry player? Well…

 

– Since AMP strips your content down to the bare bones and hosts it all within Google’s server, all content everywhere starts to look the same.

 

Fake articles, clickbait stories, and other useless articles appear right alongside legit stuff.

How does the user distinguish in Google’s logo-less-garden?

 

– Mobile speeds have improved manifold since AMP’s introduction in 2015. Users were being forced to read text-heavy pages.

 

And Google made sure you couldn’t disable AMP.

9. What was wrong with AMP? (Developers’ POV)

AMP stood for a Google-specific platform; however supposedly ‘good’ it might have been sold as.

And there is no single developer community, and developers are working on many platforms and technologies – from WordPress to React websites.

So letting it all go and work on the Google way was a bewildering experience for many. Clients wanted features, users wanted features, but Google said ‘less javascript’, for example.

10. How does it Affect SEO?

How does AMP Affect SEO?

 

Discussing AMP and not talking about its impact on SEO or is amp good for SEO or not is impossible. 

 

However, AMP may be no more a ranking factor, but as Google has said, you get SEO points if you create an excellent Page Experience and meet Google’s new ranking factors.

 

Make sure your website loads quickly on all devices (mobile-first) and is user friendly.

 

And Google has said it will rate websites broadly on speed (load time), responsiveness (interactivity), and ‘visual stability (meaning: Buttons are clear, well-spaced)

 

I suggest you do your reading of Google’s Core Web Vitals requirement as soon as possible: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en

 

Also Read the 10 Secrets to a Well-Performing Website: https://netmaxims.com/blog/learning-in-website-development-in-18-years-10-secrets-of-a-well-performing-website-part-3/

 

11. Was AMP any Useful for an eCommerce Website?

Not at all. AMP’s goal is ‘content first’, so many features essential to a dynamic eCommerce website were not available, for example, dynamic fetching of pricing and availability, which is script-dependent.

12. Was only Google Using AMP?

Google Using Accelerated Mobile Pages

 

No. We are mentioning only Google because of its King Kong-sized influence over the online publishing business.

So after Google pushed for AMP, other search engines such as Bing and Baidu (in China) also introduced AMP-like projects for publishers.

13. I am using AMP. Do I need to change?

And if you use it for websites (I am guessing yours is a news/news blog website) and it’s working for you, you don’t need to change anything.

 

However, the AMP Project was meant to make websites faster on mobile phones. If that goal is being achieved, why change?

 

Google may not consider AMP for ranking purposes, but the AMP Project team is adding new features to meet Google’s Core Web Vitals requirements. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en

 

Moreover, using accelerated mobile pages may mean that you do not need to completely change your codebase or increase your resources to optimize for mobile.

 

However, using AMP means maintaining multiple front-ends, which means overheads.

 

Maybe it’s far simpler to optimize your base website.

14. I have not used AMP, but will I ever need to use it?

its worth

 

AMP will be helpful in other areas of Google search because of its unique ability to display certain things.

For example, take the “swipe to visit” feature in Google Image search. AMP is also valuable for Google’s “preferred” in the “for you” feed in Google’s news-reading app, Google Discover. Image-heavy news websites may find AMP helpful.

 

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/07/helping-publishers-and-users-get-more.html

15. Why did Google give up on AMP in Search Results?

The one-word answer is MONOPOLY. Antitrust pressure is mounting on Google in America and the European Union.

So the U.S. Department of Justice called Google a “monopoly gatekeeper to the internet” in a lawsuit alleging antitrust violations.

European Union has already fined Google more than $9 billion for antitrust violations.

 

Content creators were not happy.

 

News publishers complained that Google was coercing upon them to let it host their content.

And Google kept pushing news publishers to make their websites AMP first because ‘Google News Carousel = Big Traffic’.

 

And News publishers who were using AMP saw an increase in traffic from Google, but they didn’t get more loyal readers and revenues after all that.

 

https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/11/19/as-antitrust-pressure-mounts-google-to-pull-back-benefit-to-news-sites-that-adopted-its-preferred-mobile-technology

Do you Need Help with Site Optimization?

So, are you looking for website optimization to increase website speed for the mobile, layout stability and responsiveness?

 

Netmaxims has worked on thousands of web projects in our 20+ years of serving online businesses.

 

And we will be happy to help you – either through consultation or hands-on web development.

Our SEO experts and developers are always in sync with the latest.

 

Contact us for more: https://netmaxims.com/contact-us

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Taru M. Author :
Taru M.

For over 18 years, Taru M. is a successful technology entrepreneur by profession and a tech enthusiast by spirit. She takes pride in offering expertise in her domain to business people's success across the globe. As a business woman and technology expert, she manages to keep her balance along with her family responsibilities. She did her masters in computers, and her work delivery shows the expertise of her education. Connect with her via Linkedin profile to know more about her exciting personality

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