Tag Archives: AMP

8 tips to AMPlify your clients

Here is our list of the top 8 things to consider when helping your clients AMPlify their websites (and staying ahead of their curiosity!) after our announcement to expand support for Accelerated Mobile Pages.

  1. Getting started can be simple

If a site uses a popular Content Management System (CMS), getting AMP pages up and running is as straightforward as installing a plug-in. Sites that use custom HTML or that are built from scratch will require additional development resources.

  1. Not all types of sites are suitable

AMP is great for all types of static web content such as news, recipes, movie listings, product pages, reviews, videos, blogs and more. AMP is less useful for single-page apps that are heavy on dynamic or interactive features, such as route mapping, email or social networks.

  1. You don’t have to #AMPlify the whole site

Add AMP to a client's existing site progressively by starting with simple, static content pages like articles, products, or blog posts. These are the “leaf” pages that users access through platforms and search results, and could be simple changes that also bring the benefits of AMP to the website. This approach allows you to keep the homepage and other “browser” pages that might require advanced, non-AMP dynamic functionality.

If you're creating a new, content-heavy website from scratch, consider building the whole site with AMP from the start. To begin with, check out the getting started guidelines.

  1. The AMP Project is open source and still evolving

If a site's use case is not supported in the AMP format yet, consider filing a feature request on GitHub, or you could even design a component yourself.

  1. AMP pages might need to meet additional requirements to show up in certain places

In order to appear in Google’s search results, AMP pages need only be valid AMP HTML. Some products integrating AMP might have further requirements than the AMP validation. For example, you'll need to mark up your AMP pages as Article markup with Structured Data to make them eligible for the Google Top Stories section.

  1. There is no ranking change on Search

Whether a page or site has valid and eligible AMP pages has no bearing on the site’s ranking on the Search results page. The difference is that web results that have AMP versions will be labeled with an icon.

  1. AMP on Google is expanding globally

AMP search results on Google will be rolling out worldwide when it launches in the coming weeks. The Top Stories carousel which shows newsy and fresh AMP content is already available in a number of countries and languages.

  1. Help is on hand

There’s a whole host of useful resources that will help if you have any questions:

Webmasters Help Forum: Ask questions about AMP and Google’s implementation of AMP
Stack Overflow: Ask technical questions about AMP
GitHub: Submit a feature request or contribute

What are your top tips to #AMPlify pages? Let us know in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.

Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager

How to best evaluate issues with your Accelerated Mobile Pages

As you #AMPlify your site with Accelerated Mobile Pages, it’s important to keep an eye periodically on the validation status of your pages, as only valid AMP pages are eligible to show on Google Search.

When implementing AMP, sometimes pages will contain errors causing them to not be indexed by Google Search. Pages may also contain warnings that are elements that are not best practice or are going to become errors in the future.

Google Search Console is a free service that lets you check which of your AMP pages Google has identified as having errors. Once you know which URLs are running into issues, there are a few handy tools that can make checking the validation error details easier.

1. Browser Developer Tools

To use Developer Tools for validation:

  1. Open your AMP page in your browser
  2. Append "#development=1" to the URL, for example, http://localhost:8000/released.amp.html#development=1.
  3. Open the Chrome DevTools console and check for validation errors.

Developer Console errors will look similar to this:

2. AMP Browser Extensions

With the AMP Browser Extensions (available for Chrome and Opera), you can quickly identify and debug invalid AMP pages. As you browse your site, the extension will evaluate each AMP page visited and give an indication of the validity of the page.

Red AMP icon indicating invalid AMP document.

When there are errors within an AMP page, the extension’s icon shows in a red color and displays the number of errors encountered.

Green AMP icon indicating valid AMP document.

When there are no errors within an AMP page, the icon shows in a green color and displays the number of warnings, if any exist.

Blue AMP icon indicating AMP HTML variant if clicked.

When the page isn’t AMP but the page indicates that an AMP version is available, the icon shows in a blue color with a link icon, and clicking on the extension will redirect the browser to the AMP version.

Using the extensions means you can see what errors or warnings the page has by clicking on the extension icon. Every issue will list the source line, source column, and a message indicating what is wrong. When a more detailed description of the issue exists, a “Learn more” link will take you to the relevant page on ampproject.org.

3. AMP Web Validator

The AMP Web Validator, available at validator.ampproject.org, provides a simple web UI to test the validity of your AMP pages.

To use the tool, you enter an AMP URL, or copy/paste your source code, and the web validator displays error messages between the lines. You can make edits directly in the web validator which will trigger revalidation, letting you know if your proposed tweaks will fix the problem.

What's your favourite way to check the status of your AMP Pages? Share your feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.


Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager

How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site?

If you have recently implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages on your site, it’s a great time to check which of your AMP pages Google has found and indexed by using Search Console.

Search Console is a free service that helps you monitor and maintain your site's presence in Google Search, including any Accelerated Mobile Pages. You don't have to sign up for Search Console for your AMP pages to be included in Google Search results, but doing so can help you understand which of your AMP pages are eligible to show in search results.

To get started with Search Console, create a free account or sign in here and validate the ownership of your sites.

Once you have your site set up on Search Console, open the Accelerated Mobile Pages report under Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages to see which AMP pages Google has found and indexed on your site, as shown here:

The report lists AMP-related issues for AMP pages that are not indexed, so that you can identify and address them.

Search Console also lets you monitor the performance of your AMP pages on Google Search in the Search Analytics report. This report tells you which queries show your AMP pages in Search results, lets you compare how their metrics stack against your other results and see how the visibility of your AMP pages has changed over time.

To view your AMP page metrics, such as clicks or impressions, select Search Appearance > Filter search appearance > AMP.

(Note: if you’ve only just created your Search Console account or set up your AMP pages and they have not been detected yet, remember that Google crawls pages only periodically. You can wait for the scheduled regular recrawl, or you can request a recrawl.)

Have you been using Search Console to monitor your AMP pages? Give us feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.

Posted by Tom Taylor, AMP Community Manager

The Need for Mobile Speed

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick for Publishers Blog
Today, we’re excited to share insights from a new study on how mobile speed can impact user engagement and publisher revenue. As people’s expectations for mobile experiences have grown, simply loading on a mobile device is no longer enough. Mobile sites must be fast and relevant.
Unfortunately, based on our analysis of 10,000+ mobile web domains, we found that most mobile sites don’t meet this bar: the average load time for mobile sites is 19 seconds over 3G connections.1 That’s about as long as it takes to sing the entire alphabet song!2
Slow loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact publishers. While there are several factors that impact revenue, our model projects that publishers whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds earn up to 2x more mobile ad revenue than those whose sites load in 19 seconds.3 The study also observed 25% higher ad viewability4 and 70% longer average sessions5 for sites that load in 5 seconds vs 19 seconds.
That’s why we’ve been so focused on mobile-first solutions to help publishers succeed — from our participation in the nearly year old AMP project, to our launch of a scalable native advertising solution, to our investment in products that help publishers increase revenue while minimizing latency.
Never before has mobile speed been more important.


3...2...1… gone

Slow page load times are a big blocker:
  • 53% of visits are likely to be abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load6
  • One out of two people expect a page to load in less than 2 seconds7
  • 46% of people say that waiting for pages to load is what they dislike the most when browsing the web on mobile devices8

We all know this first hand — if you’re looking for something on your phone, how long will you wait if the page takes more than a few seconds to load?
The three major factors that slow down mobile sites are file size, the number of server requests, and the order in which the different elements of the page are loaded. We found:
  • The average size of the content on mobile sites is 1.49 MB, which takes 7 seconds to load over 3G connections9
  • Mobile pages make an average of 214 server requests, and nearly half of all server requests are ad-related10

Getting up to speed

There are many tools out there to help diagnose the problem and fix it. We recommend a 3-step process to speed up mobile sites:
  • Assess the current performance of the site using tools like PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test, and Web Page Test.
  • Execute changes that eliminate bulky content, reduce the number of server requests, and consolidate data and analytics tags. Switch up the element order and select the minimum number of pieces to show above the fold first — styling, javascript logic, and images accessed after the tap, scroll or swipe can be loaded later.
  • Monitor performance after making changes and run A/B tests to regularly audit the setup of your site, flagging and removing anything that adds latency.

You should also investigate open source solutions like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps.
To learn more about our study and the steps you can take to improve the experience on your mobile site, check out our guide, “The Need for Mobile Speed” [g.co/MobileSpeed]
Posted by Alex Shellhammer & Juliette Neel
Publisher Marketing

1 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016
2 NPR, “Keep Flu At Bay With A Song”, April 2009
3 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics and DoubleClick AdExchange data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=4.5K, Global, June 2015 - May 2016
4 DoubleClick for Publishers, Google Active View ad viewability for 10.7K mWeb homepage domains with >70% measurable ad viewability, Global, February 2016
5 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.5K, Global, March 2016
6 Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized Google Analytics data from a sample of mWeb sites opted into sharing benchmark data, n=3.7K, Global, March 2016
7 Akamai Technologies - 2014 Consumer Web Performance Expectations Survey
8 Google Webmaster Central Blog, "#MobileMadness: a campaign to help you go mobile-friendly", April, 2015
9 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016
10 Webpagetest.org, Sampled 11.8K global mWeb homepage domains loaded using a fast 3G connection timing first view only (no cached resources), February 2016

Source: Inside AdSense


AMP your content – A Preview of AMP’ed results in Search

It's 2016 and it's hard to believe that browsing the web on a mobile phone can still feel so slow with users abandoning sites that just don't load quickly. To us — and many in the industry — it was clear that something needed to change. That was why we started working with the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, an open source initiative to improve the mobile web experience for everyone.

Less than six months ago, we started sending people to AMP pages in the “Top stories” section of the Google Search Results page on mobile phones. Since then, we’ve seen incredible global adoption of AMP that has gone beyond the news industry to include e-commerce, entertainment, travel, recipe sites and so on. To date we have more than 150 million AMP docs in our index, with over 4 million new ones being added every week. As a result, today we’re sharing an early preview of our expanded AMP support across the entire search results page --not just the “Top stories” section.

To clarify, this is not a ranking change for sites. As a result of the growth of AMP beyond publishers, we wanted to make it easier for people to access this faster experience. The preview shows an experience where web results that that have AMP versions are labeled with The AMP Logo. When you tap on these results, you will be directed to the corresponding AMP page within the AMP viewer.


AMP in Search Preview

Try it out for yourself on your mobile device by navigating to g.co/ampdemo. Once you’re in the demo, search for something like “french toast recipe” or music lyrics by your favorite artist to experience how AMP can provide a speedier reading experience on the mobile web. The “Who” page on AMPProject.org has a flavor of some of the sites already creating AMP content.

We’re starting with a preview to get feedback from users, developers and sites so that we can create a better Search experience when we make this feature more broadly available later this year. In addition, we want to give everyone who might be interested in “AMPing up” their content enough time to learn how to implement AMP and to see how their content appears in the demo. And beyond developing AMP pages, we invite everyone to get involved and contribute to the AMP Project.

We can’t wait to hear from you as we work together to speed up the web. And as always, if you have any questions, please visit our webmaster forums.


Posted by Nick Zukoski, Software Engineer

AMP your content: A preview of AMP’d results in Search

Cross-posted from the Webmaster Central blog


It's 2016 and it's hard to believe that browsing the web on a mobile phone can still feel so slow with users abandoning sites that just don't load quickly. To us -- and many in the industry -- it was clear that something needed to change. That was why we started working with the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, an open source initiative to improve the mobile web experience for everyone.

Less than six months ago, we started sending people to AMP pages in the “Top stories” section of the Google Search Results page on mobile phones. Since then, we’ve seen incredible global adoption of AMP that has gone beyond the news industry to include e-commerce, entertainment, travel, recipe sites and so on. To date we have more than 150 million AMP docs in our index, with over 4 million new ones being added every week. As a result, today we’re sharing an early preview of our expanded AMP support across the entire search results page --not just the “Top stories” section.

To clarify, this is not a ranking change for sites. As a result of the growth of AMP beyond publishers, we wanted to make it easier for people to access this faster experience. The preview shows an experience where web results that that have AMP versions are labeled with The AMP Logo. When you tap on these results, you will be directed to the corresponding AMP page within the AMP viewer. 

AmpBlueLinksDemo_v3_garciarobert (1).gif
AMP in Search Preview

Try it out for yourself on your mobile device by navigating to g.co/ampdemo. Once you’re in the demo, search for something like “french toast recipe” or music lyrics by your favorite artist to experience how AMP can provide a speedier reading experience on the mobile web. The “Who” page on AMPProject.org has a flavor of some of the sites already creating AMP content.

We’re starting with a preview to get feedback from users, developers and sites so that we can create a better Search experience when we make this feature more broadly available later this year. In addition, we want to give everyone who might be interested in “AMPing up” their content enough time to learn how to implement AMP and to see how their content appears in the demo. And beyond developing AMP pages, we invite everyone to get involved and contribute to the AMP Project.

We can’t wait to hear from you as we work together to speed up the web. And as always, if you have any questions, please visit our webmaster forums.

Posted by Nick Zukoski, Software Engineer

Source: Inside AdSense


AMP NewsLab Office Hours in your language

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a global, industry-wide initiative, with publishers large and small all focused on the same goal: a better, faster mobile web.
We’ve had a great response to our English language AMP office hours, but we know that English isn’t everyone’s native language.

For the next two weeks, we’re rolling out a new series of office hours in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and Indonesian and invite everyone to learn about AMP in their native language. Product Managers, Technical Managers, & Engineers at Google, will get to speak in their native tongue, and answer any questions you may have on AMP.

First we will reintroduce you to AMP and how it works, before diving into the technical specs and various components of AMP. You can add your questions via the Q and A app on the event pages below, and we will answer them during the office hours. You can also watch them on the News Lab YouTube page after the event.
Check out the lineup below and join the discussion.

  • French
  • Italian
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 8 @ 1500 CET with Luca Forlin Head of International Play Newsstand Partnerships
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 15 @ 1500 CET with Flavio Palandri Antonelli, AMP Software Engineer
  • German
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 9 @ 1700 CET with Nadine Gerspacher, Partner Development Manager
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 18 @ 1600 CET with Paul Bakaus, Developer Advocate
  • Spanish
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 9 @ 1430 CET with Demian Renzulli, Technical Solutions Consultant
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 16 @ 1430 CET with Julian Toledo, Developer Advocate
  • Brazilian Portuguese
    • Introduction to AMP - Mar. 10 @ 1430 BRT with Carol Soler, Strategic Partner Manager
    • AMP Anatomy - Mar. 17 @ 1430 BRT with Breno Araújo, Technology Manager
  • Russian
  • Japanese
  • Indonesian

Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager

AMPing up in mobile Search

[Cross posted from the Official Google Blog]

Access to information is at the heart of Google’s mission. Unfortunately, today, the mobile web isn't living up to the expectations people have for getting the information they need, particularly when it comes to speed. In fact, data shows that people abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn't load quickly—which is bad not just for people trying to get what they want online, but for the publishers who want those readers to enjoy the content they've created for them. That's why, last October, we joined others across the industry on the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP for short), an open source initiative to make the mobile web as fast as possible.

In just over four months, AMP has come a long way, with hundreds of publishers, scores of technology companies and ad-tech businesses all taking part in this joint mission to improve the mobile web for everyone. And starting today, we’ll make it easy to find AMP webpages in relevant mobile search results, giving you a lightning-fast reading experience for top stories.   

Now when you search for a story or topic on Google from a mobile device, webpages created using AMP will appear when relevant in the Top Stories section of the search results page. Any story you choose to read will load blazingly fast—and it’s easy to scroll through the article without it taking forever to load or jumping all around as you read. It’s also easy to quickly flip through the search results just by swiping from one full-page AMP story to the next.

AMP is great for browsing the web on mobile devices, because webpages built with AMP load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than equivalent non-AMP pages. In many cases, they’ll load instantly. It's how reading on the mobile web should be—fast, responsive and fun.

AMP_v6_phone_cropped.mov.gif

While helping people find fast AMP content through Google Search is a significant step, there’s still a lot of work ahead for the open source AMP Project. Still, it’s been thrilling to see how the industry has come together to work on this common goal of making the mobile web great for everyone. And given the potential AMP holds for other types of content, we’re excited about what the future holds.

Posted by David Besbris, VP Engineering, Google Search