AMP
Launched in late 2015, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project, AMP for short, has redefined mobile browsing. The technology aims to make browsing the internet on a smartphone faster and in a simpler way, by reducing the number of visuals shown on a web page. This allows the user to have a much more friendly experience browsing a website on a smartphone.
The aim of AMP is to speed up websites load time when viewed on a smartphone, by reducing the page to show the content only and eliminating any unessential elements such as sidebars and news feeds, so the load time is greatly reduced. This faster loading time can then have a positive impact on the ranking of the site and provides a greater focus on the page content.
How does it rank?
Like many emerging technologies and projects, AMP is always improving but not without its disadvantages. As it prevents the loading of many page elements and scripts, this can have a knock-on effect of preventing functionality such as a contact form from loading and also greatly reduces the design elements on the page including slideshow, font style etc. It also prevents tracking scripts from loading and eliminates some metadata needed for search engines, which has a negative impact on its ranking.
As content and news-driven websites would have a greater mobile readership, the AMP project was developed with these sites in mind, to allow them to be more user-friendly on a smartphone. Enabling AMP on a business website that doesn’t publish a lot of blog posts, can have a negative impact as it reduces the visual display of the posts, as well as your SEO which, all combined, would lead to a negative user experience.
We at OSD believe that AMP still has some way to go for business and tourism websites, so we will continue to focus on developing websites to be as mobile friendly as possible, without the use of AMP. This is to ensure it loads and displays the necessary information and visuals at a fast speed, and have the best chance of ranking well with search engines and portray the message a business is looking to convey.
Richard Clark-Elliot
Web Developer @ OSD
(and Star Wars fan!)
