Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is being taken beyond the “Top Stories” by Google and into the mail organic of their mobile search results. On August 2nd, Google announced a developer preview (g.co/ampdemo), with a general Google.com roll out to follow in the near future.
Ultimately, this means that mobile search users are going to start seeing content in search results with the AMP lightening bolt logo, which indicates the content is available in the mobile format (which is comparable to “mobile friendly.”
Greg Sterling spoke with David Besbris yesterday, who is Google’s VP of Engineering, and he told Greg that AMP pages will not receive a ranking boost. Even so, Google has suggested in the past load times and page speed are (or will become) mobile ranking factors. It was explained by Besbris that where there are two identical pages, one AMP and one mobile-friendly, Google will serve the AMP page.
AMP content was introducted into the Top Stories carousel in mobile results in February. Since AMP was introduced last year, it was indicated by Besbris that there are now over 150 million AMP documents in Google’s index, with approximately 4 million being added weekly.
Google has said that they have wide range of non-news publishers who have embraced AMP, such as:
- eBay
- Fandango
- Flipkart
- TripAdvisor
- Disney
- Food Network
- and many others.
Besbris, when asked about consumer response to AMP and whether there was any preference for AMP pages, he said that it was still early and explained that consumer awareness was “not well established.” Google want s to rectify that and epose more people to AMP and its benefits. Among these benefits are:
- AMP pages are 4x faster, use 10x less data compared to non-AMP pages
- On average AMP pages load in less than one second
- 90 percent of AMP publishers experience higher CTRs
- 80 percent of AMP publishers experience higher ad viewability rates
For Google, the open-source AMP initiative is a way to boost the mobile web (and search) and to deal with consumer objectifications to aspects of the mobile user experience, like annoying ad formats and slow-loading pages.