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Google’s AMP Project and the Buzz it’s Creating

By Site Strategics
March 23, 2016

When part of the Site Strategics crew was out in San Jose at SMX West, there was a lot of buzz centered on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project. For those that aren’t familiar with AMP, according to SEO Director at Catalyst Paul Shapiro, “It’s an accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages.”

Yes, those are some large words (combined with some small ones), but what does it all mean? AMP has been developed to deliver mobile content as quickly as possible by removing a lot of the in page elements that can often bog down load times. As Shapiro put it, “The open-source initiative is designed to enable publishers to easily improve speed (and consequently, the user experience) for their mobile readership without sacrificing any ad revenue that they rely upon.”

Google has created the framework with multiple components that we all use on a regular basis. Tracking pixels, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and more. If you look through some of the code and other information around AMP, you might start to stress yourself out. However, you needn’t fear, because there is plenty of easily digestible, straightforward information out there to use, including Paul’s Slideshare!

Screenshot of Google mobile app

AMP consists of three basic parts: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP CDN. Chapman Lever of Moz wrote about AMP in an easy-to-understand way, “It improves upon the traditional model of serving mobile content because it relies on a specific form of HTLML, called AMP HTML, to strip down the presentation of content.”

And how does AMP work exactly? “For starters, you will have to maintain at least two versions of any article page: The original version of your article page that users will typically see, and the AMP version of that page,” said Shapiro. This KIND OF goes against the whole responsive website idea, eliminating the use of both a mobile and desktop versions of a website, which Google didn’t want people to do, so we didn’t, and now we are supposed to do it…but let’s stay away from that rabbit hole.

The better news is, if you are not looking to getting into the news and publishing business, for now your website and its pages should be just fine. Just make sure that you are using the various tools available, like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, to speed up your site. When Google gives out more AMP information and makes a decision on a global roll-out, we will let you know. In the meantime, keep listening, keep learning, and don’t be a piece of cyber driftwood.