Google's (AMP) Accelerated Mobile Pages - What's It All About

[engine]

Those of you following the developement of Google's AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) will know what it's all about, but some of you may not be aware of what, when, how and why.

There's an interesting summary piece that goes into some of the detail which seems to give a much better overview of AMP, and how it's going to be used.

Here's a reminder for those of you interested in the SEO aspects of AMP.

The snowball effect will also apply for another simple reason: AMP-HTML coded items will show better in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages.) If Google product managers adamantly insist on the absolute neutrality of Search, it is a known fact that rendering speed is a key contributor to better rankings. In itself, this factor should act as a powerful stimulus to create AMP pages. Google's (AMP) Accelerated Mobile Pages - What's It All About [mondaynote.com]

This week, AMP’s engineers will release the version 0.1 of the code that allows publishers to implement paywalls in the AMP ecosystem. This is a critical feature for the economy of quality news media — an advantage that Facebook’s Instant Articles, or Apple’s News are nowhere near to offering.

Earlier story
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Error Report In Search Console [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: engine at 5:41 pm (utc) on Jan 29, 2016]

[goodroi]

Faster loading pages is a good thing for mobile users but I am not 100% sold on AMP. I am going to wait to see how quickly it is adopted by others before rolling it out to all my sites. This is already giving me a deja vu feeling with Google pushing Google+ authorship.

[tangor]

And here's the real reason why:

Even if the company won’t publicly admit it, Google plans to lean on AMP to curb advertising excesses on media sites. Hence the initial idea to constrain the formats allowed in the AMP ecosystem. According to Google indisputable argument, pages that render four times faster on a smartphone will cause users to increase their page-views per session and to see more ads as a result.

The desktop market is something G can't control at the moment, but mobile is "brand new" and if they can get the web critters (er ... creators) on board NOW they can clean up (in more ways than one). Do note that part of the AMP process is cached pages ... and those can also appear on YOUR systems, without recompense from G. (Read the specs, it appears this might be true)

[aristotle]

I'm not going to implement this on any of my websites, period. All of my pages on all of my sites already load far faster than the vast majority of pages on the web. I don't need google to tell me how to code a page.

[engine]

I'm all for pages loading faster on mobile, but, personally, I hate it when I don't get the full site.
Cut down mobile sites are fine if you're intent on saving bandwidth - perhaps that's also part of it.

Major publishers are the ones to benefit at the outset. I wonder how long it'll be before there's trickledown.

On the upside, here's the takeaway - it may help with your SERPs ranking on mobile: That's got to be worth investigating.

[EditorialGuy]

I'm all for pages loading faster on mobile, but, personally, I hate it when I don't get the full site.
Cut down mobile sites are fine if you're intent on saving bandwidth - perhaps that's also part of it.

I hate it even more when "mobile first" means dumbing sites down on desktop and laptop displays. (There's a lot of that going around--pages that look like enlarged versions of screens from phone apps.)

[JS_Harris]

I agree, using @media in css is nearly mandatory now.

Google goes out of their way to make sure that only the visible content on your page plays any ranking role. You lose rankings when your page requires side scrolling on a mobile device or has issues causing it to load too slowly, but otherwise it can be extremely badly coded and still receive the same rankings as a supremely coded page. I'm fairly sure this was done to keep the field level for everyone and to reduce the impact of SEO factors as much as possible.

Google gives the "Forget SEO and focus on PO(people optimization)" message quite often. If your page is adequately fast enough already I highly doubt this will make an impact in your rankings. It may, however, improve your conversions.

[bumpski]

From Webmaster Tools

We did not find any Accelerated Mobile Pages in your site

I hope Google will at least do webmasters the courtesy of measuring the load time of pages!
It appears now all they are going to do is look for the AMP code, and if not found, assume pages are not fast!
There are too many cooks in the kitchen at Google (and I'm not sure there are any chef's at all!).
As a webmaster, for years now, I have concentrated on load time. More importantly I have concentrated on providing my visitor with what they came for in ONE PAGE VIEW, and one very fast loading page view regardless of viewport size.
Google's premier (yes GoodROI premier) analytical tool makes a single page visit look like the worst possible thing that could happen on the web! Now Google is going to degrade a page visit based upon proprietary shareware?

Proprietary: Not written or controlled by the webmaster!

My sites inline CSS, inline required javascript, inline the background image (and other small images) using data:image/jpeg so that in ONE and only ONE TCP transaction stream, a visitor will receive the ONE and ONLY page they want to see in short order, via GZIP compression.

Images:
"A picture is worth a thousand words"
Pictures pertinent to the visitors needs should NOT be "lazy loaded". The page should load, then pertinent pictures, and then after the pageload event all the other stuff. Amp is probably trying to achieve this, BUT ......

Everything else should load after the onload event and there should not be all sorts of repaints, ajax additions that make the critical content jump all over the place, again for the visitor that should find everything they need on that one and only page.
Even things like the Adsense javascript, and thereby ads, can load after the user can read and view the entire stable content, while ads, etc, trickle in.

This webmaster's sites already do this! So we'll need a new script attribute called "noload" so we can put the code referencing the AMP script in our pages and get credit for speed, but the AMP javascript actually will never load. Hmmm, can we detach AMP from the DOM before is executes? Probably not.

Reading the description it sounds like AMP might make Adsense code execute in a IFrame which should be a NO NO. Who knows what Terms of Service one will be breaking should they adopt this?

Finally just looking at one major webhosting conglomerate, many MILLIONS of small websites are not served with GZIP or other compression, Google, why not exert some influence there? None of these sites will adopt AMP, because the webmasters are simply not informed. So Google is going to penalize them all? The Webhosts could speed up all these sites (server side), oh but if they forced AMP on these sites all h--l would break lose.

Google; And then there was Panda ..........................

P.S. Has anyone noticed webmaster tools is 3 or 4 days out of date? Something weird happened yesterday, a huge glitch in the data.

[EditorialGuy]

We did not find any Accelerated Mobile Pages in your site

That message is under "Accelerated Mobile Pages." If you aren't using AMP, why would you even be looking for information on that tab? Try "Pagespeed Insights" under "Other Resources" instead.

[bumpski]

Why indeed ?...

More quotes:

If your AMP-compliant pages include a few additional pieces of information, they can also benefit from special display features in Google Search results.

for example, AMP articles that include the appropriate markup properties may be shown within a carousel (demo on mobile).

Validated AMP pages are crawled, stored in, and served from a cache which allows them to be served even more quickly.

There are implicit penalties for not implementing AMP, read carefully and completely you'll find more! The last quote implies even more attention is required by millions of webmasters, webmasters that JUST WANT TO PROVIDE QUALITY CONTENT!

This is tiresome!

[EditorialGuy]

It isn't an "implicit penalty" when Google offers a service or feature that you choose not to exploit.

For example, If I haven't made all of my pages mobile-friendly (and I haven't), I don't consider it to be an "implicit penalty" when Google shows less love toward my mobile-unfriendly pages in mobile search results.

Nobody's saying that we have to implement AMP. Most sites won't.

[Selen]

Competent designers can build sites that will always be faster than those that use AMP. Incompetent ones will argue that extra code equals more speed.

[Nutterum]

Currently there is one big issue with AMP. Enterprise websites. Those can AMP only the blog pages and maybe some of their product landing pages. Everything else is impossible to convert as most of these websites have 100+ lines of JS code generated by various trackers a/b testing tools etc. etc.

If Google created AMP for the sole purpose of text copy content then thats fine, but I believe the mobile space will push for migration of entire domains towards this technology, forcing touch decisions on companies that rely on the mobile traffic for micro-moments or key funnel touchpoints for their conversion process.

[bumpski]

"We did not find any Accelerated Mobile Pages in your site"

Editorial Guy: That message is under "Accelerated Mobile Pages." If you aren't using AMP, why would you even be looking for information on that tab? Try "Pagespeed Insights" under "Other Resources" instead.

I thought this question required a more complete response.

1. If one hadn't heard of the "AMP" project and one already had "accelerated" their mobile pages, one might click on a link labeled "Accelerated Mobile Pages" looking forward to finding a useful tool to evaluate the success of their endeavors.
2. OR, another rhetorical answer to the above question, or was it a statement, regardless, another answer would be:
Why did the chicken cross the road?

[Chris_Boggs]

so just adding this here for now and going to catch up on this, as I had also been askid to chime in on the topic but declined this one.

I asked a non-SEO dev that is really sharp esp w/mobile apps what he thought, and here are his brief thoughts and follow reply:

"This is not as much a technology as a methodology. It is a series of methods, ideas, and tools to ensure that your webpage sizes are small. This allows for Chrome and Google to pre-cache them before you click. Realistically this is intended for news sites, custom products, and static pages. It would also be very hard to do with Wordpress due to it's theme based nature."

I said:

Perfect response Darren! This is the exact snippet we can use to describe our POV if the subject comes up. Would you be interested in pursuing some of the methods for any of the types of clients you reference could possibly benefit?

Reply: "Sure! These are very cool next generation web methods. Keep in mind that this will be easier on really modern clients. It's SCSS and grunt based. It would be much easier to do on something that uses that. Because I built *** to Google's material design standards, I have that set up there do that's the kinda system they expect. Not really a small client. But hey, it's insanely cool stuff!"

[Nutterum]

Last week I made a test. I created an accelerated mobile page with all the bells and whistles and then I followed the same restrictions but without the amp tags. The latter page was faster than the AMP one. This makes me curious about the entire legitimacy of the AMP project, as venue where Google can compete with FB and Apple regarding fast loading content. You can read the full article here : [tunetheweb.com...]

Anyone else made similar tests?

Oh and one more thing. Since AMP is going live at the end of Feb do you believe it will receive a ranking boost in the same manner the HTTPS and mobile friendliness updates?

[dhaupin]

I also think its hype. They are trying to decrease load times by removing stuff then lazy loading on top of a cached page. That is not innovative whatsoever. No forms? No JS? Ok i get it now, they want to backtrack to the late 90's instead of using current technologies. On top of it, the fact that they #*$!ized the <img> tag means that, for the first time, a monolithic spec has been shattered to its roots. I question the mental competence of the project leads -- what is wrong with using a data-amp attrib on images ..... like the rest of the world does. This spec absolutely will go nowhere. The only reason it has so far is because of the SEO's who know nothing about the devs or the muddy rifts they are creating in the wake of their giant wooden wheeled bandwagon. Boom!

[dhaupin]

In addition, i would like to add this bit of deep ancient chinese wisdom: The people who are browsing via slow net/device, whether on a phone or a desktop, are already well aware that the page is going to take a few seconds more to render readable data. Whether you trim 1/10th of a second or a full second in a 6 second load time is irrelevant to those who are used to the wait. Trim 4 seconds and you have something, but a lazy loaded cache isn't going to help make that happen in regards to a carrier/bandwidth/device bottleneck. Solve the bottlenecks before applying fancy new bandaids, ya know?

[Nutterum]

@dhaupin - true, but keep in mind that the AMP technology us not focused on serving in Africa. It is made to compete with the already faster counterparts of AMP in the 1st world countries like FB and Apple. So no one cares about your slow bandwidth. What they do care is loading something as fast as FB and Apple.

[Gemini23]

So, where are we going with Meta Descriptions?
I notice the meta description isn't present on AMP content...
From Google Webmaster guidelines...
"Create good meta descriptions
The description attribute within the <meta> tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content. Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. Accurate meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough; here are some guidelines for properly using the meta description.

Make sure that every page on your site has a meta description.

[Nutterum]

Google can write one for your content. More often than not, will get the first 100 or so characters and place them as meta description.

[Gemini23]

Thanks Nutterum - of course Google can do that - I am just curious as to why a single line of meta (which can't take up much memory at all) should be removed.... or not included...

[JS_Harris]

We've detected that your pages are loading at a rate in the bottom 50th percentile, maybe AMP can help.

That is a message I would appreciate.

AMP or GTFO for mobile serp perks

That's not working for me. My page load times are in the top tier anyway thanks to having been "in the business" since before Google existed.

The only way I'd support their current message of AMP being required to get perks is if it targeted sites they've measured as slow and my dashboard shows they have continually measured my site as fast in another section.

AMP is not required for perks in other engines, just being fast is, I hope Google decides not to push too hard on AMP like they did Google+ authorship. Heck, AMP hasn't even proven itself yet so to suggest it's required for special treatment already is premature.

ALL THAT BEING SAID
While I won't be embracing AMP since A/B testing showed my pages to be equivalent, and even faster in some cases, I do appreciate that AMP may solve another problem. Consumers currently spend far more time with apps than the mobile web on their devices. I think slow websites give all websites a bad rep on mobile so for that reason I am not anti-AMP in general.

If a SLOW site needs it by all means downgrade them and let the owner know. See 1st quote. I also have a hard time believing Google would only check for AMP in deciding if a page is fast or slow, I'll wait for the "your site is too slow to be included" message before adding it.

Again, it is only one signal. AMP doesn't mean adopt AMP and get a massive boost in search ranking. That is not the case. All of the other signals need to be satisfied as well. But without question speed matters. If we had two articles that from a signaling perspective scored the same in all other characteristics but for speed, then yes we will give an emphasis to the one with speed because that is what users find compelling.

Challenge accepted.

[Nutterum]

AMP for me is the answer to all those bloated 3 click wordpress installs that are overwhelmingly dominant on the internet. Making the web faster is a noble goal and as JS_Harris mentioned, slow websites give the mobile web a bad name. What I suspect will happen however is that Google may try to shove the AMP technology down our throats by giving it a ranking boost, just like they did with the HTTPS.

Now their reasoning with https is that for mom and pop websites not implementing https properly can results in speed (among other things) issues, thus the ranking boost. But what will happen in reality is that the intense competition for ranking real estate will force small and big companies alike to adopt anything and everything that helps them rank well.

[Vader1206]

My problem - and I don't mean to sound ignorant - is that I don't know *how* to make my site AMP compliant. Almost all of the details on their pages read like gibberish. Shame there aren't plugins to make it work.

ETA: Found a plugin, but now the fun is how to get Google to "discover" it - and my ads are gone! Guess I need to read up, though if anyone has any links on what to do, please share.

[edited by: Vader1206 at 12:35 pm (utc) on Feb 22, 2016]

[Gemini23]

There is a Wordpress Plugin - not sure about any others

[aristotle]

There is a Wordpress Plugin

Does it erase all the code bloat?

[Gemini23]

Yes - Aristotle

There are in fact 2 plugins (that I can see)
I am trying one at the moment and it seems to work fine.... stripped back posts.

Plugin AMP seems to work fine but only on posts not pages
the second plugin "Accelerated Mobile Pages" - I cannot get to work... although others have....
they are plug and play... BUT also bot in early development so a few 'glitches' - although my posts display okay... with the excpetion of not displaying a gallery slideshow (which I am tyring to find a solution for)

[jambam]

Google wants to control everything.

[Gemini23]

You are right there jambam

in the UK there used to be something called The Monopolies Commission which seems to have merged into some other government department and doesn't seem to want to do anything about the Google 'monopoly'...