The Benefits of Using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Why using Accelerated Mobile Pages will make your website better
The AMP project is lead by Google, whose core mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. This depends on an open access system like the web, and therefore it’s important to Google that the web is healthy and thriving.
The way we interact with the web has vastly changed over the years. We are ‘surfing’ in what we now call a ‘Post-Destination Era’. This means that as opposed to heading straight to “www.Destination.com” from our desktop browsers, we are utilizing intermediaries, typically a search engine, and increasingly so we are accessing this online content with our mobile devices. This Post-Destination Era, has lead us to AMP technology. So, what is ‘AMP’ / Accelerated Mobile Pages exactly?
“AMP is an open source web development framework which acts as a web component library and acquisition system so that developers can easily build reliably fast websites with excellent user experience.” (Google I/O)
In plain language, AMP is a new method of building websites with the sole purpose of making the web better for everyone. AMP enables publishers to build their websites with seamless navigation capabilities as well as increased speed, reliability, security, user privacy, and discoverability. It is an open-source framework that anyone can contribute to, and utilize.
AMP was a hot topic at Google I/O this year, and for good reason. Here are 4 of the key benefits about AMP technology that you should know:
1) Fast, Reliable & Secure
AMP provides reliably fast-loading pages providing a consistent user experience. The median AMP page load time is under 1 second.
- Fast — AMP documents are optimized to only load resources that are light in weight and resources that are above the fold which will be user visible. Documents are served to the AMP cache so they can be accessed instantly by readers. To learn more about how the AMP Cache works, check out our “Anatomy of A Request” explanation here.
- Reliable — Because AMP content is consistently fast-loading, readers continue to return to the publishing website. Readers are learning that articles with the AMP logo are verified by Google, and will give them instant-access to the content they want.
- Secure — The AMP Cache will only accept valid AMP pages. All documents hosted on the AMP cache must go through the AMP Validator first. AMPize.me provides an internal validation process to prevent users from publishing invalid AMP pages in the first place.
2) Privacy Preservation
AMPs own ‘Privacy Preserved Pre-Rendering’ helps protect users.
- Privacy Preserved Pre-Rendering — In order to achieve ‘instant-loading’ the resource needs to be downloaded before the user clicks. This method has been used on the web before, and is known as pre-rendering or pre-fetching. While this method works, it comes at the expense of user privacy. What happens with pre-rendering is that the owner of the pre-rendered page is able to, for example, set a cookie and later send ads to the user although they never actually clicked on to their page. With AMP, pre-fetched requests go to the AMP cache, which means page owners won’t be able to set cookies before a user expresses their interest.
3) Discoverability
SEO optimization, and Rich Results Appearances
- SEO — Google provides the capability of ‘Rich Result Features’ for valid AMP pages, which appear at the top of search results. This is in essence an SEO-like benefit, but does not actually affect your search engine ranking. However, Google does give preference to pages that reliable are fast-loading which is a feature AMPhtml guarantees, increases the chances to rank higher.
- Rich Results Appearances — Websites that follow Schema.org’s ‘Structured Data Markup’ in AMPhtml can show up in Google News, and appear in Rich Search Result formats, including carousels.
4) Seamless Navigation
With a combination of PWA and AMP, users can have a fast, integrated, reliable and engaging experience with websites on any device. AMPize.me combines all the goodness of AMP within a powerful PWA shell. More about benefits of PWA here.
AMP is a great solution for publishers everywhere to build websites that are fast, reliable, safe, and beautiful. If you’re a publisher and don’t have the resources to implement AMP on your own, check out our platform AMPize.me or try out our AMP ROI calculator to see what benefits AMP can make for your website.
