Shortly after Google announced that its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) framework would no longer be required to appear in the Top Stories section of search results, SEOs working with publishers have begun to envision more ad revenue opportunities without sacrificing the traffic that Top Stories can bring. However, some publishers may feel "stuck" with the framework due to lack of developer resources or other factors.
But, due to recent unverified allegations from 17 state attorneys general accusing Google of regulating non-AMP advertising features To give AMP a “good comparative boost,” publishers still using AMP may be skeptical. Barry Adams said: “We've all known for a long time that AMP is Google's attempt to bring its own model to the web, a way to try and control chaos and establish its own methods like a standard way of operation. Independent SEO consultant and co-founder of News and Editorial SEO Summit, “These latest allegations, if true, show just how far Google's greed can get, that it will artificially penalize pages web doesn't use Google's preferred approach,” he said, quoting 2018 accuses Google of slowing YouTube down for Firefox users as a precedent for such behaviour.
While the allegations carry huge implications, the fact of the matter is, until proven in court, search marketers won't know if they're true. However, the page experience update is now fully rolled out, and we have a clearer idea of the possibilities and trade-offs without AMP.
Consider leaving AMP
“If these allegations were true, then this would be morally wrong for Google,” said Daniel Smullen, head of SEO at Mediahuis IRL. “But, let's be honest, most publishers. publisher accepted AMP due to the Top Stories eligibility requirement. Not due to its 'perceived' speeding effect. “Top Stories give publishers better visibility in search results, which can potentially attract more traffic than a typical search listing. “If there has ever been an antitrust factor to AMP, it is this,” added Smullen.
But, AMP is no longer needed for Top Stories. AMP has become required to appear in the Top Stories carousel in 2016. Last year, Google announced that AMP will no longer be required for its Top Stories section open it for good pages in terms of site experience points .
While page experience update has no impact that some SEOs expect (Google did speak that “websites don’t usually expect drastic changes”), non-AMP pages are now appearing in the Top Stories section: On October 27, 2021, non-AMP URLs accounted for 24.6% of the content. Top Stories content in the US, according to AMP Tracking Tool by Newzdash. In certain countries, this rate can be much higher – in the Netherlands, it was 80.9% on the same day.
Know your vitality. Your existing user experience should be taken into account when evaluating whether to keep, give up, or use AMP. “In my opinion, if publishers are not hitting all three Core Web Vitals metrics and if they are interested in competing on search, then continuing with AMP, from a business perspective, has might make the most sense,” says Smullen.
“Moz, in recent times study page experience ranking factor , has shown that beating all three of the Core Web Vitals metrics does not provide a significant additional advantage over beating two of the metrics,” he said. Research SISTRIX also shows that pages that meet all three CWV requirements rank only 1% better than the average for all domains, but pages that do not meet at least one CWV index rank worse. 3.7% (according to the SITRIX Impressions Index).
While beating all of the CWV metrics doesn't guarantee Top Stories, it can act as a "decisive factor" when your content performs similarly to your competitors' Your competition is based on other ranking factors. And, “It's important to note that failing all three has been shown to have an impact on rankings,” added Smullen.
Consider revenue. “We had to weigh the pros and cons of having a website that relied on ads for revenue, which sometimes didn't give us metrics. [performance] that we wanted,” said Matt Dorville, director of SEO at BuzzFeed, talk to Search Engine Land immediately after the announcement. Going away from AMP could allow publishers to find more ad revenue opportunities, but they'll have to weigh that revenue against potentially longer load times when displaying those ads.
Internal bandwidth. Improving your user experience to the point where it can compete with other publishers that may be using AMP can fall on your developers who may have been stretched: “It is a really, really hard time to say, 'We're going to prioritize certain things, like tickets for our site that will help speed things up, that's going to help with the experience. pages,' but at the same time we have fewer engineers, we have less bandwidth, we have less staff to do it,” said Dorville, noting that some publishers may be active operating with fewer employees and tighter budgets due to the economic impact of the pandemic.
Major changes to the site. Conversely, major site changes, such as a redesign or transition to a different CMS, can make it more difficult to maintain AMP. “For publishers already working on AMP, I think the deciding point will be when the site goes through any major overhaul,” said Matthew Brown, managing director at MJBLabs and former chief strategy officer. The New York Times search strategy, previously said, “After that, the cost of updating everything to AMP started to look less favorable as it was no longer a requirement for Top Stories.”
For some, AMP may still be a viable alternative
There are many push-and-pull factors that need to be considered when deciding whether to continue using AMP or get rid of it. AMP often provides a flexible page for your users and “[It] delivers strong page experience scores to publishers once their AMP code validates against 'Google' standards,” says Smullen, “AMP also has an experiential advantage on results pages of search engines due to its caching technology called AMP Caching . ”
“This is where Google, on its own servers, further optimizes the publisher's valid AMP code,” he said, “Even if Google artificially inflates the comparison between AMP and non-AMP, then the speeding effect of AMP Cache is not a hoax. ”
But as always, check before diving
At this time, all charges against Google remain unproven in court. However, if it makes sense for your publishing to start investing in user experience rather than maintaining AMP, “I recommend doing it on a piecemeal basis, starting with the high-traffic sections.” relatively low traffic of the site, to see its impact on traffic”, recommends Adams, “The case studies we have seen to date show that removing AMP, when performed does it properly, doesn't lose significant traffic, provides a pretty healthy core Vitals of the site (for non-AMP articles). And even a small loss of traffic could be worth it by removing AMP, due to the increased monetization of non-AMP articles. ”
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