AMP Archives - Web Marketing Advantage

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a Google and Twitter project that’s intended to provide website pages that load fast in mobile devices. It’s an open source project, intended as a response to various efforts from Apple and Facebook.

What Makes AMP Fast?

AMP pages are HTML pages, but there are certain HTML tags that you aren’t allowed to use. There’s also a streamlined version of CSS that you need to use. Finally, JavaScript is not allowed at all. They provide an off-the-shelf JavaScript library you can use, that supports functions such as lazy loading.

The whole thing is designed around readability and speed. Images don’t load until they are scrolled into view; that’s provided by the JavaScript library. And the design is intended to allow pages to be cached, so that Google can host those pages and download it fast to mobile devices.

What About Position in Search Results?

The first use of AMP has been by news providers. They use it to make news pages that read very fast on mobile devices. Google has cooperated by showing these early in search results.

Google has told us that the position in search results is determined by the desktop version of the page, not the AMP version. There is a boost in position in search results for pages that are mobile-friendly, and that applies to AMP pages as well, but there’s no position incentive for AMP.

However, if your site has AMP pages, they may be displayed in Google search results, once AMP is fully implemented. Since a growing number of searches are now conducted using mobile devices, it’s time that your site offered AMP pages if you’re serious about getting search traffic.

How Do I Implement AMP?

If your site is built with WordPress, you’re in luck. Download the AMP plugin, and for most sites, the job is done. If you have a custom site, then you’ll have to custom-build AMP as well.

If you’re not using WordPress, note what’s happening here. Google supports a new feature that provides their customers better service. So they tell everyone to implement it–but since so many sites use WordPress, a plugin is provided. Don’t be surprised to see this scenario play out again with other new developments.