Accelerated mobile pages (AMP or AMPs) is a publishing technology that was originally designed as a competitor to Instant Articles, a technology from Facebook. An accelerated mobile page is a way to make super-fast mobile pages. Google and Twitter are the actual designers of AMP. The pages are a sort of simplified HTML, designed with speed in mind. The cool thing about AMP is the designers decided to make it open source. That means anyone can use it without paying and they intend on keeping it that way.
Announced in late 2015, AMP has been a game changer. In fact, not even two years later, in early 2017, accelerated mobile pages accounted for 7% of the traffic for the top publishers in America. From there things have continued to grow as the months pass by. Twitter started to link to accelerated mobile pages from its mobile apps.
Google has reported that AMPs usually load in under a second, leaving virtually no wait time for the user. They also use a tenth of the data that regular pages use. Meaning it’s incredibly friendly to data plans and can help save on cost. The original idea behind improving the mobile site has been measurably achieved with the invention of accelerate mobile pages.
Being open source means that anyone may create features that work on AMPs. If they follow the rules designated in the Google AMP Project guidelines. Both advertising and analytic companies have come to rely on the power of AMPs. They are officially partners on the project.
Why Use Accelerated Mobile Pages
The biggest search engines in the world link to accelerated mobile pages including Google, Baidu, Sogu, and Yahoo. A lot of social platforms have gotten involved as well, most notably Twitter. Just like with the search engines there are both American and Chinese social platforms using the technology. It has also spread to e-commerce and content publishing platforms including companies from the US, China, India, and the Ukraine.
Many people within the industry believe that AMPs may be an attempt by Google to dictate how websites get built. This would also affect how websites are profitable and would be financially advantageous to Google. One criticism of AMPs is that they generate less advertising revenue than other pages. It is due to the fact that banner advertisements are the standard advertisements for AMPs. This means publishers cannot sell expensive customized advertisements.
Accelerated mobile pages have changed the game when it comes to browsing from a mobile device. They have created incredible speed and still manage to use less data than standard websites. Although they have been widely criticized, AMPs have been accepted by some of the leading companies around the world as a good practice. The question may be is this Google’s way of controlling the internet, or is it simply a good idea that has improved mobile web browsing significantly? We may just have to wait until we have more facts to decide. Either way, all web developers should learn about AMPs, because we may see even more expansion in the years to come.
If you want to learn more about Accelerated Mobile Pages contact Site Ascension Today!
