You may have heard the term "AMPs" thrown around lately. What exactly are Accelerated Mobile Pages, what do they mean for search, and how can you prepare for it all? In this week's British Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow and Tom Anthony of Distilled lay out all the important details.
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Video Transcription
Tom: Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to British Whiteboard Friday. We're filming this in the London HQ of Distilled. This is the founder and CEO, Will Critchlow. I'm Tom Anthony, head of the R&D department, and today we're going to be talking about Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Will...
What is an Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP for short)?
Will: I'm glad you asked, Tom. So an Accelerated Mobile Page (or AMP, for short) is a project from Google and Twitter designed to make really fast mobile pages. At its essence, it's basically a stripped-down form of HTML, a diet HTML if you will. Tom will talk a little bit more about the actual details on that.
But fundamentally, it's an HTML page designed to be super lightweight and critically designs really fast loading. So Google, Twitter, a bunch of other companies have rolled this out — kind of in response to projects like the Facebook Instant Articles project from Facebook and Apple News and so forth. This is designed to be the open response. So it's open source, and there are all kinds of elements of openness to the project.
What makes AMP so fast?
Tom: Absolutely. So as Will said, it's like a diet HTML. So certain tags of HTML you just can't use. Things like forms, that are out. You also need to use a streamlined version of CSS. You can use most of CSS, but some parts are falling under best practice and they're just not allowed to be used. Then JavaScript is basically not allowed at all. You have to use an off-the-shelf JavaScript library that they provide you with, and that provides things like lazy loading.
So the idea is that the whole platform is designed just for pure readability, pure speed. Things such as images don't load until they're scrolled into view, and the JavaScript does all that for you. We anticipate they're going to be at the point where the JavaScript library is built into certain operating systems so you don't even need that either. And then all of this is designed to be really heavily cached so that Google can host these pages, host your actual content right there, and so they don't even need to fetch it from you anymore.
Will, you're going to tell us how that works?
How this works in your mobile device
So this is a page on your own domain constructed of this stripped-down form of HTML. So if you want to see this in action, I've referenced the Guardian here. They were one of the first reference partners. You can put /amp on the end of any news story on the Guardian website and see the AMP HTML. It's linked in display with the AMP HTML link in the source code.
So that's the hosted AMP. That has nothing to do with Google. You can just do that, and it is designed to be faster. But they've also rolled out this free hosted cached platform part of the deal as well, which is labeled here with the gstatic.
So when you actually see these things showing up in Google search results, which we'll talk about in a moment, the version that shows up there will typically be hosted on a gstatic.com, in other words a Google-hosted cached version. And critically both of these, both the one you host yourself and the version that is cached around the Internet potentially even by other people as well, both of those would contain the rel=canonical back to the original. It's similar. It's like a rel alternative in a mobile world.
So it's fast because the HTML is cut down, but it's also potentially designed that these things are bits of content that can be cached potentially by anyone without rel=canonical pointing back to you.
Tom: I think it's worth saying that even on the cached version of the pages, Google have said that you're still going to be able to provide your own adverts. We don't know the details of it yet, but they've built a platform where you can serve adverts from AdSense, Outbrain, most of the major advertising platforms, and you'll still accrue all the revenue. They don't take any of that stuff.
Also with the cached versions you can use Analytics. At the moment, the rolled-out version you can just use a tracking pixel. But we know they're working on a platform where it's a sort of vendor-neutral platform for things like Google Analytics, Omniture, and all of that stuff. So you can still get all of the analytics. You can still provide ads to your pages and everything, even when you're served via the cached versions of the pages.
Will: Yeah, that's very important. That's part of that JavaScript framework that we were talking about, where you get these limited containers, which are a kind of very limited JavaScript functionality that you can use yourself.
Impact on the SERPs
So let's talk a little bit about how this might actually show up in search results. So first of all, what we know at the moment is it's looking like it's mobile only. It's right there in the name, Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is why I brought along my mobile whiteboard to demonstrate this for you. This is the AMP version showing up on a mobile device, tablet, phablet, not quite sure what format.
Right now it's mobile only. It's talking about being mobile. It's not even rolled out just yet. But in the demo that we've seen, it's showing up as a carousel above the regular blue links, typically for news-related terms, because most of this is focused on obviously reading contents. The people who've rolled this out first have been news publishers typically. So you search for a news-related term. You see this carousel of swipeable images above the blue links. Click on one of those, it opens super fast, that's the whole point, and then you can swipe to another AMP page across the way.
It is actually also displacing or appearing for some terms where you'd expect to see paid search ads. I wouldn't read too much into that. This is just in the demo at this point. In the long run, maybe there are paid versions of this, who knows.
We're expecting this to be rolling out soon. Google's latest official line is maybe February in 2016. But, one way or another, we expect to see this in the world some time pretty soon.
So it's not there yet, but it will be soon.
What can we do to prepare, Tom?
Tom: So there's two things. Firstly, you want to be able to start building AMP pages for your site, and you want to make sure that those pages are valid, because as we said, it's like a diet version of HTML, but it's very, very strict on how you build the HTML. The tags have to be in certain orders and certain places. You can't use certain things. And if you do any of that, your AMP page is invalid and they probably won't be using it.
So to validate your AMP pages, you actually use a tool that's built into Chrome. So if you open the developer tools in Chrome, there's a system there — and you can look it up on the AMP project website — where you can actually go to a page and you can ask it to validate, "Is this an AMP page," and it will tell you any problems with that page.
So one, build AMP pages and make sure you're doing it well, and the second bit is working out how to streamline building pages. If you're on a sort of CMS or anything like that, then obviously you want this to be an integral part of your process moving forward. You want AMP pages to be something that all pages or as many pages as possible have an AMP version of those pages. So there's already — for the most popular CMSs, things like WordPress already have plugins available — that you can go away, you can download that plugin, and basically for a lot of the pages it will do a lot of the work for you in creating those AMP pages. Also, obviously, if you're building your own CMS, then you should prioritize trying to get similar functionality into that CMS.
Will: And now is the time to do that, because being there at the launch is the time to get the kind of kick, the benefit from when these things roll out. So that's a lot of the background on it.
For more detail reading, we've got a few resources here you can go and check out. This is an actual demo of what it might look like in search results. You can try out your own searches on that kind of streamlined Google.
Tom: It's worth saying at the moment you'll only see the demo results at this page obviously. So you can only...
Will: Yes, and on a mobile device.
Tom: And on a mobile device, yeah.
Will: And then this is the original, the main project web page where you can find the GitHub repository of code and all those kind of validators and so forth, and we've written some more here. This is a link to our website.
So yeah, we would recommend you check it out if you're into publishing. This is an opportunity for publishers to get a mobile head start.
So thanks for joining us on this Whiteboard Friday. Speak to you soon.
Tom: Bye-bye.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Additional Information and Resources
- g.co/ampdemo – Demo of what AMPs might look like in search results
- ampproject.org – The main project web page, where you'll find a technical intro, tutorial, GitHub repository, and more
- dis.tl/amp-pages – Further information on AMPs and how they work
It is getting to the point where I think I need a consultant to tell me what I should do and what I should not do.
Google is coming out with things like authorship, Google+, https, mobile friendly, amps, etc... and I can't tell if they are "opportunities"... "directives"... or something else.
At some companies they might put three people to work looking at these things and implementing some of them. Other companies have three people total who must do everything from content to fulfillment and sweeping the floor. .
Something like amps is probably great for some types of websites and not worth the money and effort for others, but it is really hard for the average person to decide if you are going to get a positive return.
This WBF was really good because it helped me understand something that has been "mysterious" to me, even after reading a few articles about it. Thank you.
My question is... do you foresee anyone who really understands amps (and other mysterious subjects) like this offering a consulting service that reviews websites and talks with webmasters and gives a solid recommendation to "do this" or "forget this" or "do it with this specific portion of your content" or "do this instead of mobile friendly" or whatever?
A lot of these mysterious things arrive with evangelists who advocate them for everyone and want to charge you a bucket of money to implement if for you. Many people don't want the evangelist.. they just want to know "does this make sense in my situation?"
You're right about the amount of confusion and new directions coming out of Google. Definitely not helpful.
We do consult on these kinds of questions - without a vested interest in the implementation - but our services would only make sense at scale. For smaller sites, our approach is to write up our best practice recommendations and scale our advice that way.
For a smaller site, I wouldn't prioritise this highly - I'd put any spare effort into make the site actually better (better content / better UX) and into speeding it up across the board. AMP is a diminishing returns benefit for larger sites at this point IMO.
I'd be interested if anyone disagrees / has another perspective.
Hey EGOL,
These types of consultants already exist. Either a web dev consultant, an SEO consultant, or a digital marketing agency should be able to guide (or handle) these objectives.
The important thing is to vet them before choosing them, because there's a ton of bad agencies out there who haven't progressed their knowledge since '05.
Knowing what you don't know is a huge part of the battle. Take all of these 'mysteries,' write them down, read up as much as you can, and then ask the agencies their thoughts, recommendations, etc. on them.
This will let you know:
1. If they even know what these things are.
2. What their recommendations are.
Be weary of any agency that brushes them off as not important, because it may mean that they don't understand them or don't want to put in the effort.
Hope this helps!
Very timely wbf. One thing that's a little unclear to me at the minute is whether AMP pages replace the need for responsive/mobile friendly pages - i.e. if I had a site that was not mobile friendly at all at present and I wanted to make it mobile friendly, is it better to create an AMP version of the site or make the site responsive? Or both?
Short answer: mobile-friendly is likely much more important, at least for the time being, IMO.
Part of the reason is we don't yet know what queries may trigger AMP results (none, at present) or how soon the major platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) will include more publishers.
For the time being, and for the foreseeable future, if you choose to go the AMP route you should ideally have 2 versions of your page, your normal mobile-friendly responsive page, and your AMP.
AMP is promising, but if I had to choose today between making my page mobile-friendly or building out the AMP, I'd begin with the responsive site. This is especially important for visitors accessing your site directly or through channels you own, such as email.
Nice to hear - that's my preferred option as generating an AMP for every page on a site and linking to it's relative desktop version (and vice versa) via the <link rel=amphtml> tag could get messy and complex. Much easier to just have one page imo. Thanks for your reply Cyrus.
Any other thoughts on this?
My site (lots of articles) is not responsive yet and I'm not sure to skip responsive and just go for AMP. AMP seems to be a quick win (I can use a Wordpress plugin).
Unfortunately (if that's easy) I don't think this is the right approach. AMP pages are apparently going to appear in the carousels at the top of mobile search results, but there isn't any hint yet that there will be any attempt to direct all mobile traffic to these versions. You will still need your HTML pages to be as mobile-friendly as possible...
It's also double (read "more expensive") development, using a new and rapidly evolving technology. And as Cyrus mentioned, we don't know if queries related to your articles will trigger AMP results.
I agree with Cyrus. One interesting side-effect of AMP is that it may make people produce better (non-AMP) landing pages which are streamlined to be easy to 'AMPify' and thus get some of the benefits of AMP already.
The game-theory side is actually one of the most interesting parts I think. My conversations with big media about this have been fascinating - the ability to force through changes like this when they couldn't previously force through other kinds of mobile-friendliness is very interesting.
Hey Tom, Will the Distilled (OPN) Optimization Delivery Network, Going to "AMPify " landing pages?
We have discussed this actually. It won't be able to do it automatically - we don't think there is a deterministic way of going from full HTML --> AMP because there are all kinds of trade-offs and decisions to be made. In any specific case, though, it's quite likely that we could build rules within the ODN to do this (for anyone not familiar with what we're talking about, you can read about our ODN here).
So basically Google is going to host your content, keep people from visiting your site, and show them a big button that says "return to Google". Sounds like a bad deal for publishers, IMO. What happens when they start showing their own ads on YOUR content? Or showing related content from your competitors?
It seems like Google has found a way to keep mobile users from ever leaving their site. They're building an alternative mobile web with a persistent "go back to Google" button at the top of every page. :-/
I wouldn't worry unduly about the "host your content" or "keep people from visiting your site" parts - since the analytics and advertising are your own, there is very little difference in that respect.
I agree with you on the "return to Google" part though (and the related content from competitors - the trial already has swiping between articles from different publishers).
What can you do?
On this theme - also note that links people click in your articles will open in a new tab/window so that the lure of the Google SERPs will always still be there next to the page people are looking at...
Hi guys any thoughts on the issue of duplicate content if your serving a standard page and AMP page with the same content? I realise Google may 'get it' but what other search engines E.g. Bing and Yahoo
Nice wrap-up of what AMP is all about. Seems to a be a shift from Google's strategy. Until now they were always promoting to use responsive design for mobile - one source for all devices. Rather than working on improving the performance of the normal HTML they now seem to have taken the choice of having a dedicated "mobile" site (=AMP version). It is still necessary to have a normal responsive site (or a dedicated mobile one) and on top of that we all will have to build an AMP version. That is, until Google changes it's strategy/vision again. It will be a lot of work to adapt the sites, and there can be short term benefits if you are able to do it before your competition. In the end, once most of the sites have an AMP version we are back where we are now - with just another code base that needs to be maintained. Don't know if we really have to be enthusiastic about it.
Can be Authorship - quick enthusiasm and year later images removed from SERP and then "we decided to shutdown"...
Normal and thin mobile HTML code can be very quick. Of course if there isn't Javascript code and tons of CSS for rendering. At least similar as AMP.
One prerequisite I would add to the "prepping for AMP" category is to mark up your articles with the necessary Schema.org properties. We noticed last week that Google had updated their guide for article rich snippets with a number of additional Article properties, many of which are deemed "required" for AMP. The Structured Data Testing Tool is also validating against "AMP Articles," so you can be certain you're meeting Google's requirements from a structured data standpoint.
Aaron Bradley examined these updates in great detail in his post last week: https://www.seoskeptic.com/google-article-rich-snippets-guide-updated-for-amp/
Great session it was. Its totally change my concept about AMP, before reading this blog I was thing that AMP is not realeted to SERP. But now I got it clearly.
Hi Will & Tom,
I have two questions
I would wager that this is going to become the next must-have.
With Google pushing an increase in the power of HTTPS yesterday, I can imagine these will incorporate HTTP/2 (now on Nginx 1.9.5) & HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) for any encrypted site wanting to use AMP.
AMP looks like an awesome opportunity for everyone to learn more about site speed and another thing to maintain as an SEO.
Fantastic British Whiteboard Friday.
All the best,
Tom
Hello from the UK! Good WBF guys and it's come at a great time too.
The rolling out of AMP pages will without doubt force people to think about the UX, speed and overall design of their mobile site. It's interesting that this strategy is going down the route of "create one website for desktop and create another website for mobile visitors" as Dirk said above, the big G has always recommended responsive design. The thing is, this would mean creating a responsive website and then making another version of the website all in AMP - and we don't know whether google would choose AMP pages over responsive pages or whether they'll favour particular industries with large amounts of mobile traffic (news sites / publishers).
I do believe that while AMP pages load fast (and actually it's great to see how quick they are), they may force people into creating boring / ordinary pages that look very similar.
I do think it's a bad idea to exclude HTML forms - A small local business may find that a contact form generates the majority of their leads but AMP pages wouldn't support this - What would happen if Google decided to show the AMP page rather than their responsive site which performed better but suddenly didn't rank so well.
That said, I can't wait to test out AMP myself and see how it performs.
So, they have excluded a lot of bits of HTML. I think they'll expand a bit potentially what is included, but native HTML forms are likely to remain tricky as Google displays your cached AMP pages in an iframe currently, and so links all open in a new window and they basically want to avoid that iframe navigating somewhere else whilst still wrapped in an iframe on their domain (for security amongst other reasons, I imagine). Forms could be re-implemented with some special AMP wizardry that opens a request in a new window potentially, so we'll see.
The AMP vs responsive non-AMP pages is an interesting one, but it is early days and I think we need to see what happens before we can make a call on that one.
Thanks for the reply Tom. As iframe's tend to have an adverse affect on page load times that's interesting to hear! Also, I know that Google struggle to read iframe content (but can obtain content from src url) so do you think that would suggest that they would need to use your current responsive / mobile website for ranking of your amp article?
I can see how AMP pages could work really well for help / guide pages but perhaps not so well for lead generation pages that rely on forms / sign ups but we will see!
Thank you guys!
Are AMP pages only relevant for articles / blogs / news pieces and should we prioritise building AMP pages for our current news, guides and car reviews section of the site?
I'm not sure how this would work with our whole site as we have a lot of forms as we are a lead generation business in the automotive industry.
AMP is primarily designed for content you read (i.e. where the primary "conversion" is attention). There are no forms, so lead-gen is hampered.
For sites that are not primarily media sites, I'd recommend trying it out on blog or article content. You could extend it to guides and reviews - but beware that you're trading off the faster-loading and the slick interface for an extra click to get to a page with a contact form on it.
Thanks Will. Our reviews / news / guides don't host any forms on-page so I think this would be a good place for us to start experimenting based on what you'e said. Thank again. Have a good weekend!
This needs to be shouted from the mountaintop! People are misunderstanding the purpose of AMP; that they need to rewrite every page of their entire site in AMP. This is incorrect. There is no need for the NY Times or CNN to rewrite their home page in AMP; so why should you? Only the articles (or landing pages) that users would be interested in reading on their mobile devices need an AMP counterpart.
Also, AMP is an evolving project, and recently amp-form began to be supported; allowing usage of
formandinputtags (although at the time I wrote this it is 'experimental.')Hi all,
I am using amp(2.0) plugin in my word-press(4.4.1) blog and my question is how to find its working properly? i am testing in both desktop and mobile to add /amp in URL its shows working but in google webmasters shows We did not find any Accelerated Mobile Pages in your site. is there any process to test AMP?
Why to add /amp in URL with out /amp google index or not?
Actually all are saying AMP working in mobiles but in mobiles also add /amp to test it there is no difference to testing AMP Project in Desktop/Mobile?
Google which URL to index? like ?amp=1, /amp, (or) with out /amp .
Google shows my blog URL with out /amp in Mobile/desktop Search Engines. So why to work on AMP Project is it useful to Mobile Search Engine Result Pages?.. If It is useful tell me how to work, test and results...
I read all above conversions and GitHub Amp Projects..
It doesn't matter what your URL is, along as the canonicals are in place correctly! It takes a few days for Google to pick up the changes for your AMP pages, so give them time. It's worth resubmitting the pages using Google Webmaster Tools once you've made changes - that will speed things up.
I read here https://wfi.lomasm.ru/русский.wfi_в_ногу_со_временем/первые_шаги_wfi_и_accelerated_mobile_pages that the pages will be issued directly from GOOGLE servers bypassing my website, is that so?
This seems to me more as an improved copy of Facebook Instant Articles, but only for mobile versions of your content - https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2015/09/22/instant-articles-from-CMS/
I need to make my Magento store pages as amp pages and it is hard to find any solution. I have only found one by Plumrocket company - "Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Extension for Magento". But I am not sure, shall I buy it or can I somehow implement the amp technology by myself.
Hi There , Little bit of self promotion but You can use Webkul AMP extension https://store.webkul.com/Magento-AMP-Template.html if you are using Magento 2 then you can use Magento 2 AMP Extension . Even You can find the preview in google We ( webkul ) have already included AMP at our store as well you can try it out in google using the same keyword "Magento 2 AMP Extension" . Few things you need to understand
I hope above information helps you choosing right AMP extension . Cheers :)
Hi,
I just implemented a web page for Amp
Could have replaced the original webpage but for hreflang as that cannot be implemented still from their specs.
Seems good fast , no javascript like in 2002!. Got it validated and submitted it to big G right now.
Will try out all the capabilities next week.
Does AMP help in a mobile app webpage( I meant part of the app)? I think may be it should, with all the Google CDNs
Great stuff in above blog. Thanks. Lots more work for developers yeah.
Kumar
[Links removed by editor.]
Hi, all examples of schema.org markup for AMP pages include either Article, Recipe, Review, or a VideoObject. Can we markup our local businesses? Will Google show those AMP pages in search results if we markup lawyer or a dentist instead of NewsArticle?
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Dentist",
"image": [
"logo.jpg"
]
}
Thank you.
Very useful content, thanks
Rapid indeed.. I couldn't watch all of it due to a speeded up playback, but I can applaud the return of the Mobile Site!!
When I finally realized the responsive design was a clever compromise I told my top client to think about having a mobile site.
Thanks to faster load times and a catchy new name, one size fits all, responsive design, can give way to more work but cleaner more thoughtful designs and renderings.
One size fits all is not generally what I find myself shopping for..
TTSEO
An insightful update on Google's AMP project. Practically, it seems to me that websites responsive design pages (i.e. enhancing 'mobile friendly' aspects of ones website pages) is primarily required in the first instance. Since the Rel - Canonical deference from AMP version pages back to the original (desktop) pages is required/recommended (and likely required to give clarity to the visiting Google bot which page versions are for what parts of their G.search platform). However will this not mean that at least in terms of seo and webpage rankings in search engine results pages (serps) that the original website version (i.e responsive design/mobile friendly version) will be targeted for that while AMP version pages will (at least initially) occupy the carousel slot at the top of the G. Serps in mobile? This seems to delineate two occupying spaces on the Google serps.
1. Mobile 'carousel' in search > providing a different, high visibility, layer in early primary view when using mobile devices.
2. Google web (or mobile) search results pages. > providing users search query results.
To conclude, I agree with some who have already said, that it is another level of web developer maintenance (handling two versions of sites pages). So ensuring responsive design, or one mobile site version, that is 'mobile friendly' is primary at this time while gearing up to test and implement AMP version pages of ones website is worthwhile to tinker with at this early stage while watching how it unfolds in the coming months. That at least puts one in a position to implement very quickly should we see benefits to this project that might, as yet, be unclear.
Those looking to publish and or advertise on their pages may find that their need to consider pages with an AMP version is a higher priority? Getting in early into the carousel line up display feature may reap rewards (before others get into it).
At this early time I would be happy to go forward with implementing AMP versions for example for a small website blog or an articles area on a website i.e. for reading content material areas of the website. This practically puts me in a reasonably familiar position with the new AMP development pages to implement quickly and more widely should the need arise as we come to learn more about it.
Many thanks for this WBF Will Critchlow and Tom Anthony. Much appreciate the summary clarifications.
Thanks for the clear explanation Will :-) Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
So, each page within your CMS or HTML site will need to be converted to an AMP page? What about navigation on AMP pages? Also, I don't quite understand this at all. Is this an attempt to baby-sit web developers because they constantly fail to develop efficient and quality sites, pages, and content for mobile devices? Is AMP to replace mobile web development altogether? Even with the enormous trend of using WordPress to develop a website, I still develop a smartphone version of the site separately to eliminate unnecessary interaction effects that slow down load times and make the site more effective and efficient for mobile phone users. It's good stuff but this appears a bit redundant from the original message to web developers that has constantly been ignored over the decades only to once again find a band-aid for the issues.
Hello Jonathan, I believe your first sentence is a misinterpretation of the purpose of AMP; not every page needs a corresponding AMP page. As Will Critchlow stated above, AMP is primarily designed for content you read (articles, blog posts; perhaps landing pages.)
If the purpose was to convert everything to AMP Google could have just created an conversion algorithm; instead, they have put the onus on the content provider to determine what is important to be available via AMP.
Is there anything we have to do to let Google know about adding these AMP pages? I used a plugin for WP to add it to my site but how do I know if Google has fond them? Or is there a step I have to do to notify Google about it! Will they see it on their own when the crawl my site? Are they added to sitemap?
Hi There , Well actually you dont need to do anything if you have setup AMP pages correctly . There are tools avalible from google https://search.google.com/search-console/amp to check your amp pages . Also login in to your google web master tool - under Search Appearance -> Accelerated Mobile Pages . You will able to view the AMP report.
Is AMP works only blog pages or also works on webpages like services pages?
Accelerated Mobile Pages helped us improve our website and blog loading speed. That's why have written an article about how we implemented AMP: https://www.timecamp.com/blog/index.php/2016/03/accelerated-mobile-pages-how-to-implement-them/. Would you like to take a look at it? Thanks in advance!
Nice to learn about AMPs. Still need to dig deeper in to this to learn more, I believe this should definitely have an affect on rankings as this should increase the page speed. Thanks for the post. Should try it on my site sometime soon :
Excellent article, I continue learning more and more in this Seo, thank you very much for your contributions, I will continue investigating on the subject in different places to continue learning and updating, good luck
Why do the AMP urls not have descriptions in the meta? Was this deliberate? I cannot imagine the meta description takes up much memory.
An other great article. Keep your work Will. Good job! ;)
It's interesting that, when AMP was introduced, there was a mandatory structured data mark up in JSON-LD but now it appears to be only a reccomandation. Why the change?
Very interesting. I hadn't spotted this. I imagine it was probably getting too much pushback, but it is interesting to see how Google are pushing JSON-LD in so many places. Those juicy little machine readable nuggets of data!
Really good info here. I am super interested to see these results online.
Hey guys, great job! Any insight on if they are planning on rolling out AMP versions/guidelines aimed at lead gen or e-commerce? I could picture the same row of AMP pages at the top of the SERPs, but with products. Scroll right, find the product you want to check out, click, read, and then buy that product. No cart. Thoughts?
Even without making pages AMP ready, this all goes to show that search engines want cleaner, easy to understand sites.
AMP and HTTP/2 rollouts are showing that search engines are serious about site performance and UX being important ranking factors. My guess is we are moving towards a world where bad performing sites drop completely (more than they already do.)
It make sense with Google's goal to give you the best results as fast as possible. With rich snippets and these new innovations for website speed, Google's trying to get the user their answer without even a click.
I'm not a developer (although I'm doing my best to learn), so I can only make recommendations to dev teams. This will jump to the top of my list now. Excited to see where we're headed.
Great #WBF on #AMP Great Comments.... I agree Cyrus Shepard, first choice should be responsive design which is good for any devices then other option will come, But this AMP bread in butter for online Media & Entertainment sites who are running more ads in websites to manage the page speed.
I am looking forward to see this in action next year. Thanks for the update on this !
Thank you Will Critchlow and Tom Anthony for letting us know about this rapid growing mobile page optimization technique. Its very new topic for me and it takes some more time to understand completely.Its interesting to see leading publishers and technology companies already implementing it. I expect few more whiteboard friday sessions on this.
It's so important for mobile pages to load quickly, especially for usability. In fact, since AMP is a Google-backed project, it's a good idea to at least consider looking into it. We already know that it's important for websites to be mobile friendly.(https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6196932?hl=en). The quicker a page loads, the happier your website visitors will be, which can increase the likelihood that they'll visit your website again.
It will be interesting to see how this effects Ad Blocking. When I view a AMP page on the Guardian site I see open blocks of space for the ads, whereas if I view the regular version of the url the ads are gone completely.
Thanks for the amazing WBF Will. So, AMP is the next big thing I believe :-)
Thank you, this is just what I needed right now!
I think it is a stepping stone to something much grander that Google has in mind and it will eventually evolve into something with broader application. Those of us who support smaller, non-newsworthy organizations should probably sit tight and wait to see what happens.
Excellent and timely topic, well presented!
Thank you for that post. Is just what I'm searching for.
Thank you Will Critchlow and Tom Anthony for this whiteboard
Hey Will Critchlow,
Nice WBF on Accelerated Mobile Pages. Nice work
Thanks for the detailed article ..... please check our article on
How to implement AMP on Wordpress & Other Websites (https://goo.gl/ULXRqZ) it will also give you an idea about
the anatomy of AMP.
Thanks Will and Tom. I have to look into this project and see how i can implement it on my site.
Is it directly concerned about site speed.
Hello Poorvai Group, if you read the AMP specification summary you'll find a key purpose is to enable the search engine to calculate the resources required to render the page prior to requesting the content; thus reducing typical back-and-forth, repeated round-trip process of TCP communications to determine what resources will be consumed by loading a given page as well as given page items. User<->page interactivity is reduced; while content delivery speed is optimized.