Google announced in its blog that AMP pages now appear in mobile search results. What is AMP, who uses it and do you have to adjust your web pages?
What is AMP?
The AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project is an open-source initiative aiming to improve the performance of the mobile web. It was launched by Google last October.
In simplified terms, AMP strips out most of the elements which cause web pages to load slower on mobile devices. For example, JavaScripts, unnecessary navigational elements, and a lot of traditional ads. HTTPS is mandatory for AMP pages.
On February, 24th, Google announced that AMP pages will be displayed in mobile search results:
“Now when you search for a story or topic on Google from a mobile device, webpages created using AMP will appear when relevant in the Top Stories section of the search results page. Any story you choose to read will load amazingly fast-and it’s easy to scroll through the article without it taking forever to load or jumping all around as you read. It’s also easy to quickly flip through the search results just by swiping from one full-page AMP story to the next.
AMP is great for browsing the web on mobile devices, because webpages built with AMP load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages. In many cases, they’ll load instantly. It’s how reading on the mobile web should be-fast, responsive and fun.”
AMP pages will be highlighted in the mobile search result pages with this marker: AMP marker
Who uses AMP?
At this time, AMP is mainly used by publishing and technology companies. AMP is mostly targeted towards news articles.
Do you have to adjust your web pages?
At this time, AMP is an experiment, albeit a big one. It’s hard to tell whether AMP will be a success or not. Instructions on how to make your web pages AMP ready can be found here. If you use WordPress to create your web pages, this plugin can help you:
https://www.wordpress.org/plugins/amp
AMP is not critical for most web sites. There are many other things that are much more important to make sure that your web pages get high rankings on Google.