AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a specific page format offered by the Google search engine and available since February 2016. This type of page aims to optimise the mobile user experience by drastically reducing web page loading times. How does an AMP page work? Who is this page format aimed at? Why make your site AMP-compatible? Answers in this article!
PS: On 17 April 2019, AMP unveiled three major developments at its eponymous conference:
- it is now possible to embed custom JavaScript in AMP pages thanks to a dedicated tag
- an AMP stories carousel will soon be implemented on the search engine results page
- the URL displayed by an AMP page is now the same as the URL of the canonical page on the site hosting the original content
What is AMP?
As mentioned in the introduction, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP pages) are pages designed to optimise browsing “comfort” on mobile. How does it work? You simply remove the elements that can weigh a web page down, turning it into an ultra-simple static page with an interface optimised for mobile (smartphones and tablets).
AMP HTML: a simplified language
AMP pages mainly use AMP HTML, which is a minified HTML language in which all elements likely to slow down page loading are removed. If you want to know more, we invite you to read the explanation AMP has provided on the subject. Note, however, that this page format caps the maximum page weight at 50 KB. You will therefore need to optimise your images and videos if you want to add them, because the good news is: it is possible!
Caching handled by the search engine’s CDN
To make page loading almost instantaneous (90% faster than a non-optimised page), Google stores AMP pages and caches them on its CDN (content delivery network). This means that when you view an AMP page on your phone, you are not requesting content from the server that actually hosts the website: it is a page already loaded by Google’s servers, which is then sent to your screen. The publishing flow for an AMP page is therefore as follows:
- you publish content on your website
- the content is hosted by your servers (or rather the ones you rent)
- Google indexes your page (unless you have added a noindex tag)
- the indexed AMP page is cached on Google’s servers
- a user clicks on your AMP page in the search results
- the AMP page cached by Google is returned to them
In case you are wondering: no, this is not a form of duplicate content! In reality, the canonical URL of the content remains that of the page you published; the resulting AMP page is only a kind of mirror page designed specifically for mobile. As a result, this type of page is extremely fast and it also helps you combat the bounce rate (pogo-sticking).
Why use AMP on your site?
- To reduce the page-load abandonment rate on your website
- To boost the display of your site’s pages on mobile
- To appear in the AMP articles carousel (located at the top of the SERP)
- To optimise your site’s usability on mobile
How can you recognise AMP pages?
AMP pages can be found in several different places within Google’s SERP (search engine results page). To recognise them, simply check whether the search result snippet includes a lightning-bolt favicon. This small icon sits just below and to the left of a result’s title. See the example below.
This image shows an organic search result on mobile for the search term “tiramisu recipe”. The result in question is an AMP page.
In addition to classic organic results, AMP articles can appear in Google News and also in a specific AMP carousel. As you can see in the following example, the AMP image carousel is a type of slider that lets you include several links to your articles. That is, you insert metadata describing how the various tiles representing each of your articles should render, within a carousel dedicated to you. Yes, it is powerful! Once you have clicked on one of the results, you simply swipe right or left and you move instantly from one result to another: no need to leave the page to reformulate your query! Note that you can also add structured data to these descriptions to enhance your results, as can be seen with the small stars and the preparation time highlighted on the article tiles below.
A carousel on the Google search page showing various AMP article results for the site cuisineaz
To set up the AMP page format on your website, you need to use the specific AMP HTML markup; if you want to know more, we recommend turning to the AMP project’s thoroughly completed documentation. Note also that there is a WordPress plugin offered by the AMP project. Nota bene: since its 1.1.1 update, this plugin allows you to create your AMP stories without inserting a single line of code.
AMP and SEO: is there a real benefit for search rankings?
Given that in France more than 50% of internet connections are made via mobile and that more than 20% of internet users leave a page after 4 seconds of loading, it is recommended (by Google) to make your pages AMP-compatible. It should be noted that, according to several SEO experts, Google favours AMP web pages in organic results. This can be explained in particular by:
- compliance with the W3C guidelines linked to this page format
- minimal loading time
- usability optimised for mobile
- and surely by the bias the search engine grants its own page format…
In short, this format is only a series of technical optimisations for your mobile web pages. You are absolutely not obliged to adopt this type of page to rank in SEO, unless for you shining in Google’s eyes means agreeing with everything it says… If your website meets today’s web requirements in terms of usability and accessibility, and your loading time is also optimised, AMP will not particularly improve your rankings from a technical point of view. The only thing it will genuinely bring you is potentially a place in the AMP articles carousel if your article ranks well.
Who are AMP pages aimed at?
As mentioned above, the AMP page format was specifically designed to be as lightweight as possible and therefore to reduce the content Google has to store — er, to be as fast as possible! AMP pages are therefore not intended for good-looking content. What we mean by that is that you cannot use this type of page to incorporate parallax effects and other JavaScript animations or transitions! That said, custom JavaScript has always been prohibited by AMP, but it now appears to be possible thanks to a dedicated tag. In any case, everyone can use AMP! Yes, even e-commerce sites! On that subject, infinite scroll is now possible on AMP pages with a lazy loading system. This new UI-oriented feature was announced at the AMP conference on 17 April 2019. Admittedly, we will all agree that this page format is mainly aimed at editorial content. The websites targeted by this page format are therefore news sites, blogs, or more broadly inbound marketing enthusiasts.
