Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

What are Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP?

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a web framework created by Google. They started it in February 2016 to make web pages faster and better for users. The main goal of these pages is to boost how pages work. However, some issues have made it difficult for everyone to use it as their preferred method of creating web pages.

Accelerated Mobile Pages can accompany standard mobile pages allowing for the same content to have a dual format. The two formats are connected via a special header tag that enables search engines to properly identify and index both formats for display in search results by GoogleBot or by other search engines that support Accelerated Mobile Pages content.

For platforms like Apptrove, which provides service for both app developers and marketers; understanding the value associated with Accelerated Mobile Pages will impact how potential customers interact with landing pages via their mobile devices, how effectively campaigns generate traffic for mobile applications and will also improve optimisation opportunities between web-to-app journeys when implementing AMP enabled landing pages, as opposed to traditional mobile webpages.

How do Accelerated Mobile Pages work?

These are ​​designed to avoid common coding issues developers face and is easier for browsers to interpret AMP HTML, hence reducing lags.

These pages are served directly from Google AMP Cache. Google chooses to serve the cached copy of the landing page whenever required to offer faster loading times.

And when Google is not able to serve a cached copy of the landing page, your Accelerated landing page will load from your web server. Although the latter is not the fastest way to load the page, it is considerably faster than traditional non-AMP landing pages.

Why Do Accelerated Mobile Pages Matter? 

AMPs give content makers two main perks:

• Users Have a Better Time as the Pages load faster
• Google Sees You More

In today’s online landscape, slow page loads can push users away. On the other hand, these boost your website’s speed. This helps websites with unoptimized or complex code, as Google has already streamlined the performance.

Even for quick-loading websites, these pages can improve visibility in Google search results. A big plus is showing up in Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages Carousel often at the top of search pages, for news content supported by big publishers (except Facebook and Apple).

Advantages of AMP

Advertisers: These pages can be utilized for a variety of advertising formats. User experience is not interrupted by ads as the content is loaded asynchronously.

Publishers: Most Publishers benefit from the placement of AMP websites. Mobile optimized websites promise higher usability and contribute to better user signals.

Users: Users can now experience faster load time for pages and will get significant improvement in performance while browsing on slow internet.

AMP Drawbacks 

While there are significant benefits, they face criticism in two main areas:

• Less Brand Traffic
• Weak Money-Making Potential

AMP’s setup doesn’t let users stay on the publisher’s site. Instead, it sends visitors back to Google search, which “steals” traffic and makes it hard for brands to track performance.

Making money from these pages is tough too. Less traffic due to redirects means publishers earn less. Many people who used AMP to get noticed on Google later discovered its limitations.

These problems have slowed down the usage of accelerated mobile pages compared to other tech. Though it’s great for user experience and search visibility, accelerated mobile pages face big hurdles to take over the mobile web.

Conclusion

Accelerated Mobile Pages, also known as AMP, is a fast browsing experience used by Google to create a great mobile browsing experience. There are many benefits to speed and the agility of Accelerated Mobile Pages, but there are also many barriers that Accelerated Mobile Pages put on how a website would perform. AMP is an easy way to create a webpage and/or application for a website; however, for online publishers and advertisers trying to maximise their website traffic, there are many obstacles involved in creating profitable opportunities from that traffic.

Online marketers must understand the limitations of Accelerated Mobile Pages for the success of their campaigns. Due to Accelerated Mobile Pages’ restrictive framework, options for customising a webpage are minimal. When compared with a non-AMP page, much of the advanced tracking capability of Accelerated Mobile Pages will be lessened; therefore, due to the low level of control an advertiser or publisher has over what happens during the user’s journey, a publisher or advertiser’s ability to create an effective campaign will be greatly impacted. Thus, although Accelerated Mobile Pages present an opportunity to create fast-loading webpages, many marketers, developers, and content teams continue to debate AMP’s long-term value in the digital industry.

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