AMP Goes from Top Stories to Potentially All Mobile Search
Google Rolls Out AMP to All Mobile Content
The search community is agog with the announcement that Google has begun its full rollout of AMP to all content on mobile search. AMP, which stands for “ Accelerated Mobile Pages ,” started as an open source project to help publishers create fast-loading web pages. AMP-enabled content was initially only visible as news stories featured in the Top Stories carousel. As promised back in August, Google has now started supporting AMP for non-news content and this update is currently visible in mobile search results.
To encourage publishers to AMP-enable content, Google has shared a number of benefits. For mobile users, AMP pages load faster (less than one second). For publishers, this is important towards decreasing site bounce and abandonment rates. In its research on micro-moments , Google found that 70% of mobile users will switch to a different site or app if the one they are trying to access loads too slowly.
Moreover, AMP-enabled content displays the AMP “lightning bolt” logo as a signal of a fast-loading mobile experience. Google has repeatedly stressed that AMP is not used as a ranking factor. However, a company representative has indicated that if searchers associate AMP content with a pleasant mobile experience, they are more likely to click on listings displaying the AMP logo. This is indirect guidance that AMP-enabling content can impact performance.
BrightEdge Keeps Customers Ahead of the AMP Opportunity
Back in June, we pre-announced a feature in the BrightEdge platform to help publishers optimize for AMP opportunity. This feature is now available to all BrightEdge customers as the first and only solution to help brands identify, optimize and track performance on Top Stories and AMP-preferred topics. By identifying the keywords that are AMP-preferred, customers can hone in on the topics where AMP-enabling content will have the greatest business impact.
In an interview for the Think with Google Blog , BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu remarked on the importance of optimizing and measuring for mobile, noting that “many times, the small screen is where people are influenced….” With more than half of search coming from mobile devices and AMP-preference now extended to the full universe of mobile search, it is more important than ever for brands to provide fast and delightful mobile experiences. Failing to do so means that publishers miss out on the additional traffic, conversions and revenue from these fleeting but very lucrative mobile-driven micro-moments.
Contact us to learn how BrightEdge can help you optimize performance in this growing mobile opportunity.