Google has announced that its long-maligned Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) platform is losing its preferential treatment in search results.
What is Google AMP?
Google introduced AMP as a way to provide optimised loading experiences on mobile devices. Google cached the content and served it from a Google domain name when it appeared in search results. Accelerated Mobile Pages ranked higher, and appeared in search results with a special badge indicating the page was fast loading, even if it didn't necessarily load faster than other sites. AMP was also a requirement for appearing in the Top Stories Carousel at the top of the results, or in Google News.
What is Changing?
Google is removing these advantages in search as part of the 'Page Experience Update', which is scheduled for June 2021. This update includes the much-blogged-about Web Vitals. Here's what Google said:
“The AMP format is no longer required and that any page, irrespective of its Core Web Vitals score or page experience status, will be eligible to appear in the Top Stories carousel. We're also bringing similar updates to the Google News app, a key destination for users around the world to get a comprehensive view of the important news of the day. As part of the page experience update, we're expanding the usage of non-AMP content to power the core experience on news.google.com and in the Google News app. Additionally, we will no longer show the AMP badge icon to indicate AMP content.”
Why is Google doing this?
AMP caused a large backlash from the internet community because many saw it as contrary to the idea of an open web. Google was inserting itself between the user and a website, and AMP introduced a number of headaches for webmasters. The official line is that with the new Web Vitals as ranking signals, Google didn’t want to overburden webmasters. However, given the control Google was exerting over websites with AMP, and the recent antitrust cases putting pressure on Google, it may simply have decided it was prudent to drop it.
What do I do now?
If you are currently using AMP, you can keep using it. If you aren't, you can concentrate on optimising your own website to create a good loading experience without using the Google-mandated way, and without being penalised. That's a good thing.
Conclusion
The imminent arrival of the 'Page Experience Update' means it's worth getting familiar with the Web Vitals and checking how Google views your site performance in the Chrome UX Report. And remember, Peakhour.io can make your website faster, more secure, and more reliable in under 5 minutes.
