Things You Need To Know About Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

Smartphones have completely changed the way of accessing information. Having surpassed desktops and laptops regarding online searches, smartphones have become the prime focus of every business entity and technology groups. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is the outcome of the influence of information search via smartphones.

The term AMP has grabbed the attention worldwide; however, not everyone is up with the acronym. If you too want to know what exactly AMP is all about, I’ll enlighten you on the same by uncovering all the necessary things about AMP.

In this write-up, I will explain:

• Google AMP: Evolution in a Brief
• How AMP Works?
• AMP Integration
• AMP Analytics
• AMP on Google: Mobile View

Let’s take a look at each pointer, one by one:

Google AMP: Evolution in a Brief

People who belong to or are constantly in touch with digital marketing and technology must be well-aware of “Web Performance” issue. There are a plethora of books, whitepapers, blogs, and e-books that educate people on how to resolve the issues. Additionally, countless discussions are held on various forums and tech sites regarding the same subject.

However, even after living in the era of constant research and development, online users often face poor web performance issues, especially on smartphones. Users browsing the web on smartphones in search of news, articles, and blogs often encounter painfully slow sites that irritate them the most, due to which they abandon those sites.

AMP, the short for “Accelerated Mobile Pages,” was introduced recently and seems promising, but it is still incomplete. Last year, in October, Google announced AMP for a faster, open mobile web.

AMP project is an initiative taken by Google with a vision to provide an open-source framework that promotes the development of fast-loading mobile pages. The biggest plus point of using this framework is it optimizes websites without altering the primary mobile web experience. Moreover, being built on the existing web technologies makes it highly compatible to work with different existing platforms like WordPress.

So, AMP is designed to enhance the mobile experience, which otherwise was focused on static content-oriented pages. It is the outcome of the experiment to make existing mobile-oriented sites load faster for delivering great browsing experience to the users worldwide.

Now, you must be thinking, how it helps? Then take a look at this:

AMP HTML is claimed to be pretty fast. The developers have tested the sample pages using Speed Index on Nexus 5 with 3G Internet and found performance improvement between 15 percent and 85 percent.

AMP’s Style of Working

AMP offers an excellent way to create mobile web pages through the framework. AMP in action comprises of three different parts:

1. AMP HTML

It is derived from HTML, so one can call it a subset of HTML or HTML extended with custom AMP properties. Don’t get confused; AMP contains maximum tags of regular HTML while some are AMP-specific tags. Further, you can click here to see AMP sample document and HTML tags in AMP spec. You can refer this link for additional details.

2. AMP JS

With the restriction to use third party JS, AMP provides a vast JavaScript library that implements the best performances practices to help developers to a great extent.

3. Google AMP Cache

With the support of CDN (Content Delivery Network), it offers caching for AMP-enabled pages to optimize certain performances.

AMP Implementation in Your Website

New to AMP? Don’t worry you are not alone. Everyone adopting the approach will witness it for the first time.

Now, that you want to implement it on your site, then ensure you maintain two separate version of the article page that you want to test. The first version will be your original one while the second will be your AMP version.

Though there are various concerns about using AMP, as it does not allow creating a lead capture form, does not support third-party JavaScript, also features such as on-page comment and several other are missing, you can refer to this blog by Paul Shaprio to find solutions to these problems.

AMP Analytics

As I mentioned earlier in this write-up that AMP is a full-fledged framework that provides supports up to a great extent. Yes, people will get a smart analytics with AMP that follows the philosophy of “measure once, report to many.” You can get additional details on AMP Analytics.

AMP on Google: Mobile View

Now, you must be thinking, how AMP would look on mobile SERPs. For better understanding, you can watch this video. Further, check out the demo of a well-renowned publisher, “The Washington Post” on mobile.

Related: How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Audience?

Wrapping up

Just like you, even I am not too familiar with Google AMP. However, I have tried my best to cover some crucial information to make you aware of this new buzz. I hope you will like this post and don’t forget to drop your valuable comments below.