Introduction to Accelerated Mobile Pages
Is the term “Accelerated Mobile Pages” foreign? A significant chunk of mobile and web app developers are familiar with the concept of AMP. We decided to break some walls around the phenomenon for the rest of us who do not know it.
People all over the world are shifting to a mobile-first approach. Even in countries where basic lifestyle facilities may face shortages from time to time, we see improved telecommunication services in comparison. After all, there are more than 6 billion mobile phone users worldwide.
In 2020, $2.91 trillion worth of business/commerce sales happened via a smartphone. As per recent analytics, the number jumped 22% to $3.56 trillion in 2021. eCommerce business owners cannot take mobile phones lightly now.
When it comes to your business websites, faster speed means a sure way to get the sweet nectar of SEO ranking. And it is not that hard to get to that spot: with modern internet usage via mobile phones and handheld devices, and it is not that hard anymore.
Slow speeds over phones are nothing new. Remember when we had to load a webpage version of Facebook via Opera Mini browser on our Nokia handsets? You would not want your online business customers to feel the same when they get to your website. Updating your SEO algorithm is essential to ensure that your website not only loads quickly but also provides a seamless and optimized experience for mobile users.
Accelerated Mobile Pages – The Definition
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) is a product of Google’s open-source HTML coding project in 2015. Its goal was to help websites load faster on mobile pages. Naturally, eCommerce (or better yet, m-Commerce) businesses found this extremely beneficial, and the term had its mega boom.
AMPs work as if you are summarizing something. Or like abridging a large book. It regenerates the web page with its most essential bits and makes a stored cache version on Google servers. It allows the content to load faster and without unnecessary delay on their end.
The trick is to bring a change without making it seem obvious. The difference between a desktop and a mobile interface won’t matter much to an untrained eye. However, many features help accelerated mobile pages, one of the best ways to keep your audience engaged.
Accelerated Mobile Page Source Code Characteristics
All servers can read the AMP Source Code generated by Google. The following three elements are characteristic of AMP:
- AMP HTML: Only one http request is sent when the page is loaded.
- AMP JavaScript: AMP makes use of asynchronous JS Code, allowing the site to start building before all JS elements load
- AMP CDN: A cache of every AMP website is saved on various servers worldwide. Content Delivery Network brings it back within a second for users to interact with, and the page’s functionality gets regularly checked.
Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages
Following are some of the great features of accelerated mobile pages:
Faster Loading
It has been established that accelerated mobile pages make your sites load faster on your mobile devices. It may seem trivial, but studies have shown that people abandon websites with a slower loading time, even as little as 3 seconds!
When a user clicks on any AMP results in a search engine result pager (those with the icon and the AMP label), the content is loaded immediately, without leaving Google’s SERP.
Better Search Engine Ranking
Google made it very clear that websites with slower loading times would not get higher search engine rankings, even though it is still not an independent ranking factor. As much as you improve your website’s AMP, you will see how greatly rankings improve than slower and unresponsive sites.
Higher rankings automatically translate to better visibility and engagement.
How Do Accelerated Mobile Pages Work?
If we were to bring our coder and developer lingo on, here is how we will explain how it all happens. Whenever a user searches on Google and clicks an AMP result, the content gets loaded through the AMP Cache within the Google domain.
Through an iFrame that points to cdn.ampproject.org, the user identification information (the clientID) is saved in the LocalStorage for the domain instead of in a cookie. The values stored are all unique.
Accelerated Mobile Pages and Bounce Rates
We cannot mention AMPs without talking about bounce rates. Bounce rates are elaborated by Google as a single-page session on your site, divided by all sessions. It can also be the percentage of all the sessions users saw on a single page of your website. A single page view triggers a single request to the Analytics page.
Did Accelerated Mobile Pages Become Obsolete Already?
Experts believe AMP is dead since the recent launch of Core Web Vitals and page experience algorithm. Google has even secretly removed the AMP badge icon from the search results. Here is what Google has to say:
“The Top Stories carousel feature on Google Search will be updated to include all news content. This means that using the AMP format is no longer required and that any page, irrespective of its Core Web Vitals score or page experience status, will be eligible to appear in the Top Stories carousel.”
With all its good features, accelerated mobile pages were not all good with their excellent characteristics: they had their drawbacks. However, this change in the landscape of mobile web optimization presents an opportunity for websites and publishers to reevaluate their approach to SEO content. A more independent, open, and healthier web is born with the project essentially wound up. So many websites and app development companies, particularly news publishers, felt like hostages and were forced to use AMP, with the only motivation being the promise of more search traffic. Now, things have started to change. And this change will not affect the speed of mobile pages at all, so it is a win-win for all.
