What is Google AMP?
According to Google, 50% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, and page speed is a critical factor in building user loyalty.
To ensure that users access information with optimal speed, Google has partnered with major technology companies such as WordPress, LinkedIn and Twitter, to name but a few, and deployed accelerated mobile pages, or AMP.
This article explains what AMP is, how it works, its main advantages and its limitations.
What is Google AMP?
Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source HTML project designed to create incredibly fast, lightweight mobile pages.
AMP was developed in response to Facebook’s Instant Articles. Unlike the latter, any publisher can set up AMP at no cost and start using it.
It works by removing HTML code from tags that slow down the page. It does this by reducing the number of standard HTML tags and replacing them with customized AMP HTML tags.
This means you’ll mainly be using predefined AMP libraries, which are custom tags used for AMP pages to provide fast page rendering (the process of interpreting HTML code into what users see).
This means you’ll mainly be using predefined AMP libraries that are custom tags used for AMP pages to provide fast page rendering (the process of interpreting HTML code into what users see).
In addition, Google AMP pages are only accessible via the Google search engine and are cached in Google CDN servers. They generally load even faster than ordinary web pages on the same websites.
How does AMP work?
AMP makes your pages load faster using optimized HTML code. Pages load faster because certain HTML code tags that slow down the page are eliminated.
Initially, AMP didn’t allow you to use JavaScript elements because they delay page rendering.
Today, you can add a custom amp-script component to enable user interactions such as social sharing buttons.
Here’s how it works.
Your AMP-optimized page will be sent to be hosted on Google’s servers.
This is how Google caches the content before anyone clicks on the page in the search results.
Then, a user can view the content in two ways:
- Google AMP Viewer, in which case the domain is Google’s.
- Signed Exchange (SXG), for example when a user sees your domain name. The content will be delivered in addition to the AMP HTML format and will appear in the standard results.
Advantages of Google AMP
- Increased page speed
Google has announced a program called Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics related to speed, responsiveness and visual stability. Core Web Vitals will become an important ranking factor by May 2021. A study of over a billion pages revealed that 90.63% of pages get no traffic from Google. This is because pages with similar content are competing for traffic.
This is where page speed plays an important role. However, this doesn’t mean that page content and relevance aren’t important. If your page doesn’t provide valuable information to users, page speed has a much lower impact on ranking.
- Lower bounce rate
Bounce rate is directly affected by page speed. Research shows that 79% of users will leave a page and not return if it loads too slowly. With a faster loading speed, a user will spend more time on a site and is more likely to convert to a customer.
According to Google, conversion rates drop by 20% for every extra second a web page takes to load.
- Less use of mobile data
Lighter pages also consume up to 10 times less data than standard pages. This is particularly critical for mobile users whose mobile browsing may be affected by certain bandwidth limitations.
- Increased SERP visibility
We can’t underestimate the obvious benefits of AMP pages for SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking. Let’s start with the most important: Google favors AMP articles in its search results by showing them above organic results.
AMP limitations
There are some restrictions on what you can and can’t use in your code when creating an AMP page.
We’ve put together a list of the most important.
- AMP style sheets (CSS)
All CSS must be inline and size-linked. This will ensure good CSS practice. The inline sheet limit is now 75 Kb, a slight increase on the previous 50 Kb. However, this is still a fairly restrictive framework.
- AMP JavaScript
Heavyweight third-party JavaScript elements don’t work on AMP, as they delay page rendering. There are predefined AMP libraries to use instead, which guarantee high speed, interactivity and visual stability. Custom JS is allowed in amp-script, and third-party JS is allowed in iframes as they don’t cause performance degradation. Note that the script limit is 150 Kb.
- Brand identity
When users access your page from the Google AMP viewer, they don’t see the URL of your web page. This is because Google only places cached content in its best locations. The original URL is stored under the information button at the top of the AMP page.
Not only is this confusing for readers, but visitors can’t verify the authenticity of the page they’ve landed on (for example, by clicking on the SSL certificate). Fortunately, there are technical solutions to this limitation that allow AMP pages to be served from a cache, but also contain an original URL in the browser’s navigation bar.
Should I use Google AMP?
The success of AMP varies considerably from website to website. Media sites generally work well with Google AMP, so if you’re a publisher with a blog or news section, we suggest you give it a try.
It may also be worth testing Google AMP if your competitors are already using this technology.
There is little data on the success of e-commerce sites.
On the other hand, many developers believe it’s possible to create fast-loading websites without sacrificing rich multimedia and advanced functionality.
At this point, we leave it to you to make an informed decision as to whether you think Google AMP is right for your site.
