Slow loading sites are arguably one of the most frustrating things about the mobile web. Recent Google research shows that 53% of people will leave a site that fails to load in three seconds or less. That’s problematic for users, businesses, publishers, websites and the mobile web as a whole.
Along with many others in the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, we’ve been working to make the mobile web experience faster. In the year since we launched AMP, we’ve come a pretty long way, with players from across the web embracing this open source format.
In February, we launched AMP in the “Top Stories” section of Google Search, delivering news in a fast and reliable way. In August, we previewed linking to AMPs across the entire mobile search results page. And today we’re excited to be rolling out that faster experience to users in India.
Now when you search on your mobile device, you’ll see a label that indicates a page is AMP’d. This doesn’t change Search results but will show you which sites have pages that are ready to load lightning fast.
Today, the median time it takes for an AMP page to load from Google Search is less than one second. Beyond just saving you time with fast loading pages, AMP will also save you data -- AMP pages on Search use 10 times less data than the equivalent non-AMP page.
What this means for publishers and websites
Just how is that speed translating for publishers and websites that have AMP’d their content? Among news publishers, the first to get on board with AMP, there are a number of case studies that highlight real benefits when content loads fast. For example, the Washington Post has seen a 23% increase in mobile search users who return within 7 days, and an 88% improvement in load time for AMP content versus traditional mobile web.
To date we have over 600 million AMP documents created by sites such as eBay, Pinterest, Wordpress, and Reddit, and there are many more sites from all over the world and in over 104 languages. These pages cover retail, travel, recipe, general knowledge and entertainment. That’s a lot of fast-loading pages! For example, Zomato has seen great early results since AMPing their pages, with page load times decreasing from 3.8 seconds to well under a second. This is great news for Zomato, who are live with AMP in 23 countries, as they’re now more likely to see site visitors come back more often compared to those accessing non-AMP pages. A few other sites that have created AMP pages in India are News 18, NDTV and Aaj Tak.
While the first year of the AMP Project has gotten off to a great start, there still remains a lot of work ahead. This roadmap is a good way to stay up to date on what is happening next. We look forward to returning in a year’s time with even more progress as we work together to make the web great for everyone.
To find out more about AMP, check out ampproject.org.
Posted by Anuvrat Rao, Strategic Partnerships Development Manager, Google