What You Need To Know About Google AMP & Setup Guidelines

Since mobile friendly web pages have become commonplace in the online marketplace, developers all over the world have had a big impact on getting things up and running smoothly. In fact, every site owner that wants a high-ranking spot in the major search engines like Google has initiated the appropriate changes to comply accordingly. Today, there have been many innovative additions to this mobile community, and some are much more noteworthy than others. One, in particular, was released under an open-source HTML Framework project in 2016 and is called Google Amp.

What is Google Amp?

Primarily, Google Amp involves applications that allow web pages to load on a mobile device almost instantly. Meaning the time for loading a publication, e-commerce site, and other content-rich sites (graphics, animations, ads) has been reduced dramatically from 22 seconds to .7 seconds. As a result of the large impact that these new changes have had on mobile page search results, Google has integrated these applications into a manner that developers can better optimize their pages via the use of an Amp (accelerated mobile pages) app.

How Does this Google Amp Work?

In order for developers and website owners to incorporate these new changes in their mobile sites, they will need to know how this app functions. Fortunately, the design is relatively simple to understand because it has only 3 main amp importance components, and they are as follows:
AMP HTML
AMP JS
AMP CACHE

All of which are designed to work together in order to create a content delivery network. Also, according to information that Google has published, this app does not only work on a stale-while revalidate model, it is free for all site developers to use when they are building the mobile sites.

Usage of AMP

While this application is available to site owners to create their mobile framework, it is also important to note that the primary focus for this app’s usage is concentrated on specific areas. Particularly, the focus is on new stories that’s being released by online publishers, online agencies, marketing and advertisement firms and e-commerce company. All of which can benefit greatly from the improvement in accelerated mobile pages. Therefore, it is huge impact on companies like Twitter, Yahoo, Bing, Pinterest, and a host of other companies that publish these content rich resources on a regular basis.

AMP and SEO

One question that most people want to know about the development of AMP, as it relates to Google search engine, is how does it affect the search engines ranking algorithm. According to Google, this new addition does not factor into how high a site is actually ranked. However, because webpages do load so much faster than those that are not powered by this new application, the click through rates are much higher. Therefore, there is a large advantage for web developers and site owners that add this app into the site that they create.

AMP vs Mobile Friendly Pages

Another key issue or concern that most people want to know is how does AMP and Mobile Friendly pages factor into the overall process of the major search engines. Again, according to Google, the 2 (AMP vs Mobile Friendly pages) are viewed as 2 separate entities running simultaneously in order to accomplish two objectives. Simply stated, mobile friendly pages are being designed with Responsive Web Design (RWD) so the pages are being optimized for the user’s to view on multiple devices like tablets, desktops as well as high-end mobile phones. On the other hand, accelerated mobile pages are being constructed with the use of an open source code that launches by instantaneous webpage loading on all of the use’s mobile devices. Therefore, there is really no duplication in their overall functions and goals that’s being achieved. Instead, both have their own distinct urls with an ending suffix that display these results (i.e. AMPs end in the AMP suffix). These distinctions are made so that AMPs can be sorted out during the process of identifying duplicate content.

To accommodate the needs for making sure these processes work as they should, users can secure a Mobile Usability Report that shows what is going on in the background. For instance, a user can request a report of any AMP related issues by viewing the Search Appearance in Webmasters section from the search console.

Setting AMP on Your Site

After a new mobile site has been designed or a developer wants to set-up AMP on their site, there is a simple process that they can follow to set up AMP. For instance, if the user is setting up AMP on a WordPress site, all they have to do is use a free AMP Plug-in in order to take advantage of an automated feature. When this plug-in has been added to the site, all of the pages will automatically be powered by AMP, and will have the AMP suffix in all of the URLs. To add configuration options for Google AMP, you need to install the AMP for WP plugin. On the other hand, for those site developers who do not use the WordPress CMS platform, the changes needed to add AMP is manual. There is also a tutorial available to assist with making these changes.

Final Thoughts
Over the years, there have been many innovative changes that have been initiated since everything has gone mobile. Recently, one of the most notable and critical involves the addition of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). With the use of this open-source project, the time in loading content-rich pages has been reduced dramatically from 22 seconds to 7 seconds.