Mobile search has overpassed desktop searches in 2015. In parallel, load time is an important ranking factor. In that context, mobile users are looking for a great user experience when searching on their devices. Users seek rich content that load fast.
In that context, Google has announced its new project: the Accelerated Mobile Pages, an open source initiative for a faster mobile Internet.
What is the AMP project?
Those pages are an open source framework, based on HTML and foundable on GitHub. And this is why those pages can be loaded instantaneously! They are hosted on Google’ servers. Based on a CDN (Content Delivery Network), those pages are super fast, whatever the device used, the content or its weight.
The AMP project is clearly dedicated to publishers and to compete Facebook’ Instant Articles and the Apple News. Google has stated that
The goal is for all published content, from news stories to videos and from blogs to photographs and GIFs, to work using Accelerated Mobile Pages.
The AMP then really focuses on delivering content and how content can be better distributed from Google Search to social networks. For now, when you request a result on the AMP Demo, you get results powered by the AMP first whereas those same results used to appear secondly. For now, this content is mostly related to breaking news.
Impact on your Ad monetisation
The first advantage of that project is firstly financial as publishers will be able to display fast ads. But it could also interfere with your ability to monetize your digital assets. The AMP project does not support any author-written JavaScript, or third-party scripts. And Javascript supplies ad serving and analytics. So if you are not using the right ad network and analytics, the AMP project might not work for you. Twitter, A9, AdSense, AdTech, AdReactor and DoubleClick are the advertise networks allowed. About the analytics, you can rely on Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly and Chartbeat. In parallel, paywalls and subscriptions are also often powered by Javascript but Google works on building
the best solutions for readers and publishers
and has published a documentation on the subject.
Impact on your SEO
The AMP can improve your organic visibility on search results
For breaking news results, Google seems to favor AMP results. Those results are more eye-catchy and should meet a higher CTA. The AMP project seems to also foster live news in its AMP results demo.
The AMP is good for your user experience
Load time is something users take into account when visiting a website. A good experience will give an extra boost of credibility to your website while facing slow page speed will decrease user’s satisfaction. Google has showed in a recent study that a second faster on a mobile page can result in up to 21 percent augmentation in conversion rate. So the AMP project comes into that logic of serving the best experience possible.
The AMP can create duplicate content
Before publishing your content under the AMP format, don’t forget to set your rel=canonical. Actually, the AMP HTML version you are going to create is a duplicate of existing contents. And you know that duplicate content is harmful for your SEO. You need to insert a <link rel=”canonical” href= ”your-url” /> in the <head> section pointing to the original one.
