Google AMP promises that your site will run 4x faster, in just 6 simple steps. For web designers and digital marketers, this might sound like a no brainer - right? Well not quite...
What is Google AMP anyway?
According to the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project, “The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an open source initiative that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere.”
In layman's terms - this means that when you search for a keyword, Google will show you a carousel that highlights stories published on AMP-enabled sites before other results
In a SERP (search-engine-results-page) AMP would appear like this:
(Source)
The major plus to publishers? The stories will *instantly* populate rather than a delayed load that might cause a loss in visitors.
According to Search Engine Journal, “AMP is a bare-bones version of your site’s mobile pages. It displays content that matters but gets rid of all the elements that take a toll on your site’s speed and performance. “
Can’t go wrong with that - except, well, you can! There are many pros to having a hyper minimalist page, but there are cons too.
Here are some major CONS to Google AMP that any digital marketer or publisher should consider before deciding to implement this on your site:
For publishers that allow advertising - your ad revenue is reduced. Setting up ads on Google AMP is possible but extremely complicated and even so, your revenue will be very limited.
Needs a different analytics tag on all AMP enabled pages - this can take some significant time and effort to set up.
The incredible speed is thanks to cache - There isn’t some brilliant new technology that makes pages load incredibly quickly. Google simply saves cached versions of AMP-tagged pages and, when a visitor accesses them, simply serves them up from the cache. Which can problematic.
The pros of Google AMP? There are two to consider....
It boosts your mobile rankings due to quicker load time. The question is still out whether google just blatantly prioritizes AMP pages.
It speeds up your load time - users never have to wait for a page or the content they are looking for to load.
Depending on your goals and content offerings, Google AMP might be great for you or it might not. There are plenty of cons and a few positives. Regardless, it might be wise to wait until the program matures to jump on the bandwagon and implement this new mobile craze.
We have over a decade of experience running successful campaigns for a variety of different businesses.
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