alexkras.com

Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic

by 286 Comments

Update 10/17/2016 6:30pm: You can read a response from the tech lead of the AMP Project for Google, in the comment area.

Update 11/01/2016 10:40pm: After learning more about AMP, it became clear that the original title was inaccurate. A better title would have been You may be losing Your Mobile Traffic.

Update 11/03/2016 10:30pm: I was invited to have lunch with Google AMP team, where I got to discuss some of my concerns. I’ve summarized my key takeaways here.

Update 01/14/2017 10:00am: Navigation Toolbar is now also scrollable on Mobile Safari.

Update 02/08/2017 10:00am: AMP Toolbar Now Has A Button To View and Copy the Original URL.

Update 09/19/2017: While I still have concerns with AMP, I wanted to point out that it did make things better for users and there is currently no good alternative.

I run my blog on WordPress with a custom theme. 6 month ago I’ve added support for Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP) in order to provide better user
experience for mobile devices. I did not research the AMP project well and have made some costly false assumptions that I wanted to share.

Most importantly, I was surprised to find out that instead of redirecting users to an optimized version hosted on my server, Google was actually serving a snapshot of the page from their own cache. To make things worse, Google was injecting a large toolbar at the top of the snapshot encouraging users to get back to Google search results (a functionality already provided by the back button) and making it harder to get to the original site.

To draw a contrast, Google have been keeping snapshots of sites for a very long time, available via a “cache” link right next to search results. The cache link, however, was optional. Clicking on the search result, traditionally, would take the user to the original source. With AMP, Google have turned this equation around.

I do believe that Accelerated Mobile Pages is a great project! At the same time, I find the way Google handles redirects slightly dishonest and very concerning.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a newish open source project that Google launched in the February of 2016.

In their own words:

AMP is a way to build web pages for static content that render fast. AMP in action consists of three different parts:

AMP HTML is HTML with some restrictions for reliable performance and some extensions for building rich content beyond basic HTML. The AMP JS library ensures the fast rendering of AMP HTML pages. The Google AMP Cache can be used to serve cached AMP HTML pages.

You can watched this promotional video to learn more about the project.

Most Web Developer would recognize the suggested list of features (listed below) as a great thing.

  • Allow only asynchronous scripts
  • Size all resources statically
  • Keep all third-party JavaScript out of the critical path
  • All CSS must be inline and size-bound
  • Font triggering must be efficient
  • Minimize style recalculations
  • Only run GPU-accelerated animations
  • Prioritize resource loading
  • Load pages in an instant

As an added bonus, it was rumored that Google will prioritize AMP optimized pages in their search results, so there was really no downside in giving it a try. Or so I thought.

AMP In Action

I run my blog on WordPress, so it was really easy to add AMP support via the AMP plugin. I remember bragging that it took less than 5 minutes to set it up, saying “Google wants, Google gets”.

I’ve been running my site with AMP support for over 6 months now.

If you head over to Google and search for “Git Tips” you will see my site with the APM icon next to it.

1-amp-demo

Clicking on that link will open up AMP friendly view of the post.

2-in-amp-close

The Problem

So far everything seems great, with one big problem. The view above is not being served from my site, but rather from Google Cache.

The URL of the page looks as follows:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.alexkras.com/19-git-tips-for-everyday-use/amp/?client=safari

Essentially, the original link with www.google.com/amp/s/ added in front of it.

Which is actually a good thing. It reduces load on my site and allows readers to access to the information much faster that my $10 a month server could accommodate.

So Why in the world am I complaining, even going as far as to imply that Google might be stealing my mobile traffic?

Guess what happens when the “close” button is clicked inside the AMP view?

3-close-button

I was expecting it to cause a redirect to the original article. Instead it redirects back to Google search results. Say What? How are people supposed to get to my site?

Luckily in my case there is a blue header at the top, clicking on which would redirect to the homepage. I have seen a number of sites, however, that do not have such header. In those cases, I literally had to copy the URL and paste it into my browser to get to the original site. I am afraid that most readers are not willing to go through that trouble.

Also note that even with the header in place, landing on the home page will make it really hard to locate the original article returned via the Google search.

One final nitpick. If Google cares so much about the mobile experience, why cover 15% of the small mobile screen with a fat bar at the top?

What about the little guy or gal?

If you watched the AMP promotional video, you’ve heard them talk about the web as the greatest innovation of our time. Except the user experience was broken on mobile and AMP set out to fix just that.

I think Richard Gingras, Head of News at Google, said it best and I quote: “Let’s make the web great again“.

Note: To be fair, Richard Gingras said it way before Donald Trump made it his campaign slogan. Still I couldn’t resist to point that coincidence out.

great-again

Unfortunately, in the process of fixing the Web, Google broke something else. It used to work like this:

  1. Search Google
  2. Find interesting result
  3. Go to the site
  4. Explore the site further OR hit the back button to go back to Google search results

Now it works like this:

  1. Search Google
  2. Find interesting result
  3. Read the content without leaving Google
  4. Try to explore the original site AND get redirected back to Google search results.

The web used to be the place where anybody could publish quality content, help thousands of people, and earn a few dollars along the way. Google Adsense was one of the main products that made this reality possible.

A lot of authors hope that people would find their content useful, stay for a while and come back in the future. None of this will work if readers are not able to get to the site in the first place.

In addition, given the wide spread of Ad Blocking software, mobile platform remains one of few places where ad revenue continues to be a viable option.

By hijacking the mobile traffic and keeping users from leaving their site, Google gets to benefit from somebody else’s content while at the same time displaying their ads. This cuts further into already narrow margins of independent publishers.

What can be done?

Ask Google to give users an easy option to view the original post.

Google could change the close button to take users to the original site. Alternatively, a different button can be added to provide users with such option.

Make sure your AMP content is optimized for the new deal

I think it is important to point out that Google is playing by the AMP rules. My main concern is that a lot of people (like myself a week ago) have yet to realize that AMP search results are being treated differently from other search results.

In other words, Google is playing by the rules, but the rules have changed.

When I installed the AMP plugin, I assumed that all my setting from my main site will carry over. This was not the case.

The AMP plugin extracted the text content and stripped everything else out. I noticed some of it, but did not, for example, realized that it removed my Analytics code. I wasn’t too concerned with the changes that I did notice, because I assumed that users will have an easy way to drop back to my original site. As of writing of this article, there is no such option.

That being said, Google allows AMP sites to display whatever content they like, as long as it complies with AMP rules.

I recommend each AMP enabled side to do the following

  1. Make sure your Analytics tracking code is properly installed
  2. Make sure you have a header that points back to your main site
  3. If your site has a menu, make sure it is visible in the AMP version
  4. Consider adding a link at the top of your AMP page, giving user an option to visit the original post
  5. Make sure your ads and other promotional material is properly integrate into the AMP version

Conclusion

I hope I am not being too hard on Google. I get it. Real innovation is hard. It takes courage. No one can get everything right on the first try and it’s easy to overlook some details. Since AMP is an open source project, I assume my feedback is welcomed.

That being said, it’s the people, millions of authors who take their time to write and billions of readers who take their time to read, comment and share that make the Web great.

Google is improving things for the mobile readers with the AMP project. I only wish they could do so without hurting the content creators.

P.S. This post has generated an interesting discussion on Hacker News, with some good examples both supporting and opposing my arguments.

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Comments

    Leave a Reply to Why Do My Accelerated Mobile Pages Point To Google Cache - And Other Evils | WP Blogging Nerd Cancel reply

    • It is not a cross at the top bar from Google Cache at least…I think whether or not to implement AMP depends on whether your site is fast enough in mobile or not.

      Reply

  4. I’m planning on implementing AMP for my wordpress site and reading this just confuses me. Can I get it clear here:

    Does AMP boost mobile ranking?
    Is AMP bad for my website?
    Is the wordpress plugin enough to setup AMP correctly?

    Please I’d really appreciate an answer from anyone.

    Reply

  6. Thanks Alex for making a comprehensive report on AMP. For a newbie, AMP seems to be a Greek and Latin subject. It would be great if you could list out the settings or customization needed for wordpress plugin.

    Reply

  7. I think as a could-inflence-world-trend big-as-country company like Google, should take a serious attitude when making such a could-influence-everybody-in-world stuff like AMP. No excuse to say that the user who uses AMP on his/her site should take care things by themselves. Google has responbility on the world.However, not everybody will agree with me, I know. So I don’t think you are hard on Google. You just point good point to take care of that they could accidently neglect on. And Google AMP team did take a quick response to your article. Last but not least, this world is made good progress from people like you and Google AMP team, IMHO.

    Reply

  10. Goal of AMP is showing more detail instantly by serving pages from google cache, and its not free. Actually I believe new site has great potential to rank up in search results by adding amp support, giants will need lot of time and energy to implement it. Title is misleading!

    Reply

  11. Nice article with in-depth knowledge about AMP pages. But what is the procedure to roll back to original pages if you wish not to use AMP version of your pages or website?

    I heard that it is difficult to do roll back to original version.

    Reply

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    Reply

  14. Couple days ago, I moved my website to htpps version. I’m still worrying the links will drop in a sudden from the current positions because Google have not crawled my site yet. And now I’m looking to heading to Google AMP version for my website. Do I have to create another redirect scripts on my .htaccess ? If yes, then,
    It will make me double worries of loosing more backlinks.

    Reply

    • Update.
      I’m surprise. My particular post ranked 4 step higher not long after I’ve finished to implement AMP version of my website (maybe just 1 or 2 hours after I asked google to crawl)

      Reply

  16. This is all part of part of Google’s ultimate plan to be the gatekeepers of 100% of digital information and internet traffic. Their goal is total monopoly. This is the Enclosure of the Digital Commons

    Reply

  17. good Article
    it is really confusing that one side i strongly feels that do not support amp on my website after reading your article.
    on another site i feel that it necessary to get higher ranking.
    I agreed that goo.gl doing this for it own interest but we have to support AMP for ranking today or tomorrow, your website is also supported with AMP.

    Author should be honest with there point !

    Reply

  18. Oh my god thank you so much for your post. I thought I was going insane and couldn’t figure out why — after clicking on a search result in Google — I suddenly could no longer copy and paste the URL to share with somebody. The URL was a convoluted Google address — not the website I was supposedly browsing… I searched many times for a simple answer, without any leads, before finally stumbling onto your article. [Note: The search terms i used which finally got me here to learn about “AMP” were: Google links URL top white bar ]

    Google has been going downhill for a while now. I have tried to grin and bear it since they used to be simple, efficient, and inspiring. This is no longer the case; even Chrome is a bloated mess that has more memory leaks than Firefox and IE. I still get frustrated on a daily basis years after they “streamlined” their keyword functionality in an attempt to “help” me find shit I never even entered into the search box (even quotes don’t always do the trick). How embarrassing for Google. With no little irony am I posting this through a Google+ account. Ugh. /rant

    Reply

  20. This is almost a carbon copy of the issues of Baidu’s mobile transcoder, Baidu SiteApp, which offers webmasters an easy option for mobile optimised pages though stays within Baidu’s cache thus allowing you zero traffic. Incidentally Baidu have also recently released their version of AMP separately (Mobile Instant Pages, or MIP) which they’re now plugging away, though no actual benefits at this stage.

    Reply

  21. Hi, I’m just an end-user with no tech knowledge whatsoever, but what brought me to this article was this ANNOYING, SCREEN REAL-ESTATE WASTING BAR at the top of my mobile’s browser screen, I actually don’t even feel page loading being any faster than before (Dolphin browser for android), but the “useless” bar at the top, with it’s more useless redirecting functionality is really getting on my nerves! At first I thought it’s my browsers fault, now I see it’ s the usual “GOOGLE” doing whatever it wants to the internet! So this is an honest end-user opinion about this whole Amp thing!

    Reply

  23. I think there are a lot of misconceptions around AMP and also about what success is going to look like in the future.

    First off, an AMP view is a ‘visit’ to your site – it’s just a super speedy version cached by Google. If you have analytics configured you’ll see these as visits to your site.

    The question will be about engagement when users are interacting on this version of your content. That’s a fair question. But then the goal is to have content and a layout that encourages users to click-through on that AMP page to your mobile site.

    Google’s primary customer are search users. And I don’t think they’re looking for Google to put flashing signs that say ‘explore this site’ or ‘go to this site’s home page’. So asking for these types of things doesn’t seem in line with the goal of search users and thereby Google. But I agree that having good navigation at the top is critical.

    Being able to quickly get to the information you’re looking for is what users want. I somehow doubt if you interviewed folks and said that when you’re looking for ‘how to stain a redwood fence’ that you want to see that content and THEN explore the site a bit more to read other articles etc. And if I did there’s an easy way to do so.

    I think the future of mobile search may not even include links to click on at all but simply swiping through content.

    http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/the-future-of-mobile-search

    Right now they’re not putting the AMP pages in a carousel but they could. They have in some other iterations. So thinking hard about what and why users would click for more and designing for that is where I’d focus.

    Granted doing all of this with just a WP Plug-In is … going to be difficult. And as such the sites with development resources will get ahead of those who don’t.

    Reply

  24. I’ve noticed the URLs that AMP content was being served up from was coming from Googles cache. The easy solution is: Google don’t stop doing that.

    Serve up people’s content from their own servers. Fast loading pages are great. What AMP is shaping up to be (in the hands of Google), not so much.

    Reply

  25. Very good points in this article, and it’s a clear design by Google to keep users coming back to their SERPs. In fact. the same situation occurs regardless of AMP when users search from the Google Search App. Similar to AMP, Google’s Search App will no longer let me have “Chrome” as my default browser. So, when I click on any result AMP or regular, it brings it up in a generic browser (not sure what it’s call) and make it logical to hit the X when you are done reading that specific page. Then, it takes you back to the Google SERP which get’s updated with a new set of grey carousal suggestions for “people also searched for”…

    Reply

  27. Well,
    AMP is very young technology, apart from some “heavy-HTML”-sites (large publishing houses) i haven’t seen many sites on which it was actually rolled out.
    You said it on your own: Innovation is tricky – so its the same with AMP.
    Give Google a little more time, they will improve it, i’m sure – this thing is that young that i can’t even walk…

    My concerns are currently much more regarding the to-be-included JS-file with a size of ~180kb, IIRC – outside the US, mobile connections are not that fast, having to have included an additional file with that size is -currently- just overkill for most (mainly) static webpages – i understand why a large publishing house like NYT may get some benefits of it, but for a “standard page” which lists just some text + images as content, it’s -yet- not worth the additional overhead of this JS file.
    (sure, take a look at your favorite debugging tool: NYT’s page et. al. is what you would call typically >overloaded<)

    Regards

    Reply

  30. I like the idea of AMP, majority of hits to my website right now are coming directly from mobile devices, but as outlined in this post it is becoming increasingly difficult for the “average” blogger to tailor AMP to his own needs in a way that wouldn’t interfere with basic homepage functionality. At this time, it’s too much for starter bloggers to pay any attention to this project because the user experience is still a little bit choppy.

    Thanks for the writeup though, nice to see someone from the official team give a legit response.

    Reply

  31. Hey, this is Malte and I am the tech lead of the AMP Project for Google. While I work on the AMP open source project, I did check back with the Google Search team that is more directly responsible for most of the points mentioned in the post. I personally find it very important to respond, because “stealing traffic” is literally the opposite of what AMP is for. The original idea behind AMP was to allow content to be distributed to platforms (such as Google, Twitter and Pinterest) in a way that retains branding and monetization control for the publisher. AMP traffic is the publisher’s traffic. Period.

    I also realize that “just turning on the WordPress plugin” doesn’t get you there. Especially if a WordPress installation is heavily customized, one will need to invest similar effort to get the AMP pages to the same quality. While this may be a lot of work, this is by design: We recommend to really optimize AMP pages and fine tune them to your needs. AMP is not a templated format for that reason. While neither the AMP project, nor Google are directly responsible for the WordPress plugin, the AMP open source project working closely with the authors of the plugin(s) to improve the quality and scope. AMP is very flexible and should be capable of providing most features of a typical WordPress site, but this flexibility also requires respective work to make custom plugins and development show up in the AMP version.

    Getting more literal about “stealing traffic”: there are audience measurement platforms that attribute traffic to publishers. They might in theory wrongly attribute AMP traffic to the AMP Cache (not Google) rather than to a publisher because they primarily use referrer information. That is why we worked with them in worldwide outreach to get this corrected (where it was a problem), so that traffic is correctly attributed to the publisher. If this is still a problem anywhere, AMP treats it as a highest priority to get it resolved.

    “Ask Google to give users an easy option to view the original post.”

    Let us start by saying that we love URLs as much as everyone else, and we tried hard to make the AMP URL scheme as usable as possible given the technical constraints of web apps.
    We’re looking at ways to make the source link more discoverable and will update once that is done. AMP is super flexible in terms of how a publisher can direct traffic to their site. Typical ways to get to a publisher’s homepage (like clicking the logo) should just work and are in no way restricted. Also, make sure to check out amp-sidebar (https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-sidebar/) for adding a menu to your AMP pages.

    If you are not comfortable with traffic on your AMP pages, please do not publish AMP pages. Google Search has 2 types of AMP related features:

    Normal search: AMP does not influence ranking. Your pages will appear in the same spot with or without AMP.
    AMP specific features (such as the “Top Stories Carousel”): For these features, we believe that AMP is the format that currently delivers the best possible user experience on the mobile web. That is because AMP allows for consistent speed, caching, pre-rendering, and enables swiping between full-length pages. This is a big deal for topics where there isn’t “that one best result” that a user might want to look at.

    “Google takes away ad revenue on AMP pages”

    AMP supports over 60 ad networks (2 of them are owned by Google) with 2-3 coming on board every week and makes absolutely no change to business terms whatsoever. There is no special revenue share for AMP.

    “If Google cares so much about the mobile experience, why cover 15% of the small mobile screen with a fat bar at the top?”

    The Android users might have already noticed that it is now scrolling out of the way and the same is coming soon for iOS (we’re just fighting a few jank issues in Safari). Similarly we’re spearheading a long term effort (https://github.com/bokand/NonDocumentRootScroller) to allow web apps to define how the address bar is hidden on scrolling. It looks like this will land in Chrome soon, providing even more space to web pages.

    Reply

      • Thanks for the update!

        “We’re looking at ways to make the source link more discoverable and will update once that is done.”

        This really was my main concern/criticism of the project. I am looking forward to learning what you’ll come up with.

        There rest was just a public service announcement, to make sure that other AMP users are not making same mistakes as I did.

        P.S. I can’t believe you own that hat, thats just too good.

        Reply

      • “If you are not comfortable with traffic on your AMP pages, please do not publish AMP pages. Google Search has 2 types of AMP related features:

        Normal search: AMP does not influence ranking. Your pages will appear in the same spot with or without AMP.”

        “in the same spot” is a bit of a grey area. If you don’t jump on the AMP bandwagon, but your competition does, you’re bound to lose a lot of traffic. So yeah you have a choice, but since Google’s pushing AMP so hard you’ll lose out if you don’t join the party.

        Reply

    • “AMP does not influence ranking. Your pages will appear in the same spot with or without AMP.”

      Thanks for clearing that up, that was my number one concern initially! Cheers!

      Reply

      • Thanks for clearing that up! I have noticed news stories appear at top with AMP, but now I do see that regular articles are intermixed with the AMP articles. The Wired article was a bit misleading on that one.

        Reply

      • Hang on, you might want to do some research first, i.e. scrape 100,000 mobile US serps and you’ll see preferential treatment for AMP very quickly. Google can get away by saying AMP isn’t a ranking factor, because they can get away with saying anything and people will believe it. The AMP carousel generally appears at the top of mobile serps, and while it may not be a ranking factor, you probably won’t ever get into the top 10 carousel spots without being AMP’d. Example: http://screencast.com/t/QH0sxslNaq. On the other hand, I do appreciate the engineers at Google, they are phenomenal, honest and always seem to act with the best intentions.

        Reply

    • AMP specific features (such as the “Top Stories Carousel”): For these features, we believe that AMP is the format that currently delivers the best possible user experience on the mobile web. That is because AMP allows for consistent speed, caching, pre-rendering, and enables swiping between full-length pages. This is a big deal for topics where there isn’t “that one best result” that a user might want to look at.

      That is a very problematic situation – you could have built a verifier tool that also allows other simple websites to be listed there, or competing standards (Instant Articles, the old Google Currents standards, etc) to be listed there, too.

      I’ll be making an Antitrust complaint to the EU regarding this, and I hope you’ll rethink your position on this.

      Reply

      • Yes, Antitrust complaints are warranted in this case. The simple argument is as follows.

        While Google may have devised the protocol and tools, having the pages hosted on their servers AND returning users to the search page is creating a silo. In addition, the temptation to impact on page rank is like gravity; without knowing it is already impacting you – it is also extremely expensive to escape – and thus the whole exercise is contrary to liberal and open markets with level playing fields.

        The protocol should, at bare minimum allow the site to define whether the AMP page is to be served up by the site’s chosen server – or Google. Then, Google will HAVE to pay up for monitoring exercises on how AMP vs self-hosted-AMP vs non-AMP pages fare.

        Reply

    • Congratulations. You re-invented the RSS format that you really do not like because you cannot insert Adsense ads there) “Thank you” for making life more difficult for webmasters.

      Reply

    • How about also allowing the end user to disable this feature? Because I find using AMP annoying i’m currently using duckduckgo.

      Reply

    • I avoid visiting AMP pages because it invokes more feelings of rage from me than not, overshadows any of its perceived added value to the mobile UX.

      How ducking hard is it to add a link to the original non-AMP generated page? Seriously, I should not have to perform 3+ user actions and spend 10+ seconds to get the original page URL.

      Google Images provides a quick way to get to the original source, FFS.

      Reply

  32. WTF. Stealing traffic … what does it matter, if the content is shown on your site or accelerated via google? It’s your content and it gets to the users. The users hopefully like it. That’s it. You’re even saving on traffic costs.
    People always complaining … just because you may not get stats in your webserver logs?

    Reply

  33. Yeah, that was pretty much the point of Google’s integration dude.

    They would serve pages from their server for instantaneous loading. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t let Google crawl your AMP urls, but then you are missing the entire point of AMP.

    Reply

  34. You bring up a number of important things that feel like they are just bugs in how the WordPress AMP plugin works (not detecting that you are using analytics already and enabling the AMP analytics; having the AMP page provide more links to your site – maybe a basic “recent posts” section at the end of the post to keep the user on your site). Converting WP posts to AMP such that they work across all themes and support different plugins is a complicated problem, but one that is worth solving.

    It would be super helpful if you could distill some of this into issues or PRs on the project: https://github.com/Automattic/amp-wp

    I worked on some of the early work on that plugin verifying that WP.com stats would be correctly recorded when AMP pages are viewed. In general I think that AMP (as a spec) is designed in a way that can allow a site to be both very fast and very engaging to keep a user on your site (and have it be monetized if that’s what you want). The current plugin needs more work to do that in user friendly way though.

    Reply

  35. Just had this happen with both Thrillist and the New Yorker. It was impossible to get to the actual page on mobile (and also impossible to scroll or dismiss the popup on the AMP version of the New Yorker). Very frustrating.

    Reply

  36. Hi Alex,
    When you try to update your post, how long it takes to update your AMP cached version?

    Reply

  37. I admit one of those designers who yet to jump on the AMP bandwagon… my excuse?… I question is long term survivability.

    Mobiles are getting faster and faster…
    We are already starting to see the likes of HEXA and OCTA cores powered phones on the market, with 10 and 12 core versions in 2017. A lot of new phones support 1080p or more, hell we even have 2K and 4K phones by Sony/LG. At pace of mobile development is moving very quickly as the demand is there, I can’t help think that AMP is just a waste of time.

    Bandwidth
    4G addresses a lot of broadband speed issues, while not breath taking, for the majority of users its good enough, but with that said we have 5G only around the corner which is going to be just as fast, or faster as home broadband. 5G is planned for 2020 (only 3 years away, for users in the UK) and most likely sooner in other countries.

    Reply

    • It’s not just the speed. People are less and less inclined to browse to an un-trusted website or article on their phone, afraid of pop up ads, auto playing video ads that cannot be turned off, the volume suddenly shooting up. AMP is raising the quality of the mobile experience by promoting publishers to conform to a restrictive spec that promises these advertising tricks will not be part of the user experience. Users build confidence in the amp logo and are more likely to click on an amp article than a regular link, much like Facebook’s instant articles.

      Reply

      • I appreciate what your saying but the majority of consumers are unaware what AMP is, so I can’t see it building consumer confidence this decade. Its taken two decades to get people savvy on SSL, and even then the majority still don’t know about it. As far as user experience, studies reveal people want a similar experience to the desktop environment, not allowing developer scripts stripes away that ‘similar’ experience instantly. I’ll go on a limb here and say that the type of people currently who know what AMP is, and see it in search results are IT savvy enough to install Ad Blockers and Disable sound from auto playing and so on.

        Reply

        • Hello.

          Don’t go on a limb! Actually, you can bet a few beers…

          I am not a computer genius with a PhD. but I may be what you call IT savvy.

          I’m an electrician who resisted as long as possible before getting a smart phone. I always wanted a phone to make phone calls, and some sms, nothing else. Two years ago I was forced into the smart phones’ world… Regular phones no longer existed in my part of the world.

          So, in the last two years I learned as much as possible about Android.

          I discovered AMP yesterday night. This afternoon I did a lot of reading about it. Now, I can see the AMP sites in the search results. I can open the full complete website even though I am clicking/taping on the AMP link.

          And… yes, all video or audio don’t autoplay on my phone. For ad blocking, I use a firewall.

          My phone is stock Android, unrooted. But in the next few weeks that will change. I plan to go “black”: rooted, custom ROM, 100% untraceable, 100% anonymous. (see http://www.torproject.com and guardianproject.info )

          All that, I learned reading different discussion websites where ideas and knowledge are exchanged between hackers.

          So, you can bet those beers, if I can do that in less than 2 years, others will do some or all of it also.

          Bye.

          Reply

    • Saying phones are getting faster and bandwidth is plentiful (which I have to pay for) as a reason to not optimize delivery is a lazy approach to programming. I like the speed of AMP enabled pages. Didn’t realize it was cached on Google, but it loads a lot faster on my iPhone 6 than a site that is not AMP enabled. Faster delivery of pages is directly related to increased site revenue and lower bounce rates. If you’re not going to make your web page AMP enabled, there’s evidence to prove that faster loading content benefits everyone.

      Reply

    • I hope you realize that not everyone has blazing fast internet speeds like we do in developed countries. A large (and rapidly increasing) number of web users are in developing nations like Nigeria and India who are using smartphones primarily and on very limited data. Having your website AMP-lified (?) can be a great benefit to getting your content out there.

      Reply

  38. I prefer reading tool in Firefox mobile. It’s far better than AMP as it’s pretty easy to configure size and color of text/page. Further, FF can use adblocker on mobile. My and my clients’ sites are all full responsive. I uninstalled AMP long time ago.
    Google is like Apple was 3 years before: No innovations, building a wall around their services (which become more and more shitty).
    Same with Facebook, they’ve started serving more and more websites within their apps. They don’t use Android’s built-in brwoser engine or Chrome anymore sometimes. Just don’t use the shit if you don’t want it.
    Further, I hate AMP because I have to load sites now 3 times with manually editing the URL. Lots of sites are running WordPress, lots of WordPress articles offer you to comment them… So now I load the RSS, then load the AMP version, then edit the URL and delete /AMP/, then I can comment. Pretty fucking easy and revolutionary, isn’t it?

    Reply

  40. If anything I think you’re being too soft on Google. They want you to use a proprietary technique and replace standards… That sounds a lot like the IE-only age. Adding to that Google Chrome’s popularity gives Google a lot of tools to become the monopolist that will eventually break the web. Everything AMP does is possible without using AMP (though a little harder to set up). But because AMP exists now, developer teams big and small will just plug in AMP instead of actually learning about performance improvements, what works and what doesn’t. The cache might be a good thing but proprietary stuff is never good for the web. It could only hurt us more in a future where Google can be as much of a problem as the Link Tax in keeping an Open Web.

    Reply

      • The closed Caching server that is used via a Google URL is not open source.

        Even worse, in scientific research this would be equal to plagiarism if there is no link back to the original content. How come students and scientists can’t do this and can get expelled/suspended or forced to resigned for doing it and Google gets a “get out of jail free card”?

        An alternative service like CloudFlare (CDN proxy) enables you to speed up your site too (and cache it) but has no penalty of different URLs.

        Reply

        • AMP is currently used in production by Google, Microsoft Bing, Pinterest, LinkedIn and many other platforms. The rules are the same for all these platforms.

          The AMP spec states
          “By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be crawled (subject to robots.txt restrictions), cached, and displayed by third parties.”
          https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-html-format.md#amp-html-

          Additionally, AMP documents re, of course, absolutely free to link to themselves at the origin location (this is very common. See for example CNN’s AMP files) and provide all typical mechanisms for onward journeys.

          There are also guidelines for AMP caches, defining what they can and cannot do
          https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-cache-guidelines.md
          Highlight worthy are:

          “Provides a faithful visual and UX reproduction of source document, although visually imperceptible changes in image resolution or compression rate are acceptable.”

          “No obstruction of the contents of the original AMP document.”

          “No changes to ads, access, analytics, or similar”.

          Reply

  43. There is nothing to stop you from producing a proper, full-fat version of your site using AMP. Using a WordPress plugin is not the best way to go.

    My main (commercial) site is now a mix of AMP and HTML5. You can’t tell the difference when surfing the site.

    Reply

    • Definitely and it’s my key takeaway. I just did not realized this when I was first introduced to AMP, and figured others may have the same problem.

      I also still have a funny feeling about Google serving my content from their cache. It’s fine now, but I am afraid that they will continue down this path destroying the web as we know it.

      Reply

      • AMP was a frustrating one as we still had to bring in a great coder to avoid all the issues brought up in the article. We made sure that we kept the ‘related articles’ and had those drive to the AMP version so as not to lose traffic for our pages but also to keep fast loading.

        What’s interesting is that we’re actually getting loads more traffic now from Apple News and Facebook Articles than AMP. We’re a new site and always had a ton of Google traffic with a fast loading responsive site, but thankfully we’re seeing that you don’t have to be so reliant on Google anymore with Apple News and Facebook thankfully.

        It would be frustrating in the past as we had to do everything Google said or pay the price of less traffic, but now we can diversify and not be so beholden to Big G which is a great blessing.

        Reply

  44. Your complaint about the behaviour of the close button on a AMP page, in taking you back to search results: honestly, that’s what I expect it to do. If I go to a page and then try and close it, fundamentally I don’t want to stay on the site. I want to leave the site.

    (Tho I do agree with “If Google cares so much about the mobile experience, why cover 15% of the small mobile screen with a fat bar at the top?” Why have the close bar/button at all? Just make sure the back button works as expected – which is both easy to do and is what everyone knows to do already. Anyway …)

    The use case of a person seeing the AMP page, but then wanting to see the non-AMP version of the same page: With respect, that’s a workflow a programmer wants to do. I don’t see non-tech people wanting to do that. When AMP is working properly, it should seamlessly fit with other content and mostly people shouldn’t notice.

    What I do see is a non-tech person opening the AMP page, liking the content and then wanting to browse around the rest of the site – as you discuss.

    I recommend each AMP enabled side to do the following 3. If your site has a menu, make sure it is visible in the AMP version

    This for me is the take away point here.

    (Also commented at https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/57q8co/google_may_be_stealing_your_mobile_traffic/ )

    Reply

    • I personally dislike other apps popping an internal browser between me and my link. Facebook app does it so does Gmail on iOS. There I have an option to open the link in the regular browser.

      Google cache experience felt very similar to me, except that I didn’t have an easily available option to get back to my regular flow.

      Reply

    • @Jarofgreen I agree! Since that bar is there, you shouldn’t be returned to the non AMP version of the page on close, it doesn’t make sense. That bar shouldn’t be there! Users shouldn’t be taken to Google’s snapshot of Alex’s page, they should be taken to the AMP version of his page where the browser CLOSE option should mean that the browser session closes, as expected, as you stated. By serving Google’s version of Alex’s page, they have absolute control – they can inject anything they like, example: ads. It wouldn’t surprise me if Google started injecting Adwords into the cached version, which can be both equally good and bad for people like Alex. Good if there is profit sharing, bad for obvious reasons.

      Reply

    • I perform Google searches on my phone frequently for articles and technical information. I am also one of those people who assumed that the X to close would mean that I was closing the Google header and thus allowing me to go to the real web page. The way this is working now makes it nearly impossible to get the real web page or web site and bookmark or share URLs. You end up sharing the Google search URL instead. The only way I’ve discovered to get to the real article if the site hasn’t taken the steps listed in this article seems to be to press and hold on the link the search results which causes a new tab to open with the real article. This is infuriating to me as I bookmark and share a lot of URLs throughout the day and now it’s a huge pain in the ass that no novice is going to be abel to work their way around.

      I do like the speed and cleanness of the pages but at the same time important content I am looking for is stripped. So Google is policing what content you can see, and, again novice users aren’t going to realize they are missing important content from the page.

      A big issue with all of this is that Google gets what Google wants. By prioritizing AMP pages in search results, we are all essentially forced to use it (or recommend it to clients if you are a web developer). It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. You have to play by Google’s rules and now you’ve decreased the amount of sharing and bookmarking of your content.

      https://www.wired.com/2016/02/google-will-now-favor-pages-use-fast-loading-tech/

      Reply

      • that’s a key deficiency from the user perspective – i too often share/reblog and until Dave Winer linked to this issue i hadn’t sussed what it was that had started interfering with my process (i don’t ever use ‘social” icons on a site, i need the actual URL)

        Reply

      • This is where everything is moving for every Google search property. Google’s immersive search experience = the AOLificiation of Google search results, with the unique twist of outsourcing content creation to you and me.

        Look at the # of swipes to get to the actual local organic result of a website for a local business in your area… no different than as you said for AMP results “The way this is working now makes it nearly impossible to get the real web page or web site and bookmark or share URLs.”

        As a business or their seo, one has to determine what’s best:

        A. formatting everything to appear in the new interstitial wave of 1-3 layers of pure google-controlled results, coded precisely the way google wants by creating perfectly-formatted documents, or

        B. have your content buried 10 swipes deep where they finally enable the user to view a true #1 organic search result slot (…god forbid you’re #3 or #4, which isn’t even a thing these days).

        Google knows you’ll choose A because they have an equal balance of leverage between those who seek to achieve organic visibility and the supply of those who will simply pay for prominence.

        Anyone remember the process of getting to the actual web from inside an AOL-monetized channel back in 1996 or 97?

        Well, Google’s mobile version of search & the web is really no different than AOL Travel, or AOL Local or AOL Money channel where that walled ad garden could persist. It’s just an “optimized” experience that feels like a web page, when in reality it’s a filtered, strategically blurred line between search and web delivered in Google’s packaged format incorporating ad units.

        The smart move Google made that AOL didn’t is to outsource content for free by leveraging the content YOU create and YOU format just for them, purely for the (diminishing) benefit of showing up there.

        Reply

  46. I’ve found your post from the wpbeginner blog because I was trying to provide AMP pages to my french readers. I think I won’t do it now !

    Reply

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