Google announced that this change will come and true to this, the Accelerated Mobile Pages will now be in organic search results officially around the world.
This giant search engine works around the clock to improve the experience of the user online. The introduction of the AMP technology makes things faster for all users. In February, 2016, Google increased its Accelerated Mobile Pages support through the ‘Top Stories’ carousel which consists of pages that have been created using this technology.
In August, the search engine gave a clue on what step it would take next in relation to the AMP technology. It stated that it would be adding AMPs to the regular organic search results. Today, this clue has become a reality.
So What Does This Really Mean For A Publisher?
If a user makes a search through a mobile device, Google will automatically make the search results based on AMPs if the version is available. This simply means that these pages will get a significant increase in exposure. For a website owner, this translates to more traffic and possibly more sales and more revenue.
There are publishers who have not yet adopted the Accelerated Mobile pages technology and now the pressure is building up. It is important to state that AMP is not considered in website ranking. However, the speed at which a page loads is considered in content ranking and these pages can load fast.
AMPs load with an average speed of about 1 second. This means that publishers who use this technology will probably have an edge over their competitors with HTML pages. Over 3G connections, HTML pages take an average of about 19 seconds to load and use over 10 times more data. You can now see why the AMP pages are favored.
What It Means For Users
Time is a very important factor in the fast paced world we live in today. This change will definitely save users a great deal of time especially when they are using mobile devices to search for information and businesses. When searching using cellular connections, the user will also save on data. It also means that users will not be getting what they are searching for faster than before.
Google will be displaying Accelerated Mobile Pages with priority and this will save users a great deal of time. Before this change, there was only a small amount of AMP pages displayed in the search results. After the change, all the indexed 600million pages and documents will be discoverable.
AMP’s Future
Rudy Galfi, the head AMP product manager at Google says that users are giving preference to links that carry the AMP lightning bolt. This trend is expected to continue as people discover that these pages are loading faster and consuming less data. Initially, after the launch, AMP technology was only being used by news sites. However, Galfi clarified this by saying that AMP is geared towards all publishers including travel, shopping, cooking, tech and any other site and not just news outlets.
It is expected that in future, developers might come to a point where coding will be entirely done for Accelerated Mobile Pages without a need for any other version. Galfi, however, says that website owners should consider a few things before getting into AMP with both legs. It is crucial to think about what they need to accomplish with the site and see if it can all be done through the AMP technology. You should learn what AMP is all about and if it will make sense if all your content was according to this technology and what benefits it will provide.
Google is not only excited with the rate at which publishers are adopting AMP, but also with the fact that other search engines are showing AMPs on their search result pages. A good example is Bing showing AMP pages on mobile applications. Content management system like WordPress are designing ways through which publishers can publish AMP content without much hassle.
Galfi did not disclose the hard numbers in future projections but he was confident that there will be continued success in the adoption of AMP technology by publishers and the acceptance by searchers.
