Google AMP ⚡: a developer's perspective

We talked a lot about the MPA (accelerated mobile pages) from Google since its worldwide launch in the list of major search engines….
amp
.. . and in this article I want to give my opinion on its good and bad points, as a developer and site owner. But first…

Why?

Official response. Do we need a format other than HTML to generate fast loading pages?
Obviously the logical answer is no, because HTML is not the problem, HTML is actually quite efficient. The problem in terms of loading speed are iframes, internet advertising networks (ad networks), gifs and other script tags. That AMP tried to liquidate in just one time ! But they don't have it not done...
So why are we doing this? Read on.

The good sides

  • The web — and news sites in particular — has become a grand bazaar because of ads and sharing buttons. We know that blocking ads significantly improves our browsing experience. Initially AMP does not authorize any Third-Party content. The specs require external tools to hook into custom HTML components. Take a look. It's a big win for users, but for developers it's yet another custom spec to deal with. I hope you are using the authorized ad networks otherwise… bad luck. And by the way, is your CMS ready foramp-youtube>?
  • Part of the AMP spec is to mark up your content with metadata. For utopians, Google wants publishers to implement metadata so they have a better understanding of the attributes and context of page content, but for cynics, it's to extract your content and inject it directly in a SERP (Search Engine Result Page). The bright side: the news json-ld spec is much clearer than its predecessor Microdata (unfortunately still alive), which involves itemscope, itemprop, meta, RDFa or even vcard attributes nested in DOM elements.
  • More visibility in the results page of Google.com. The AMP icon can attract more visits to your listing. It was also launched with a small Ranking booster (update : officially, no ranking booster). My experience is that Google usually says this to get developers to adopt new protocols. Personally, I did not perceive a slight increase. And even if it increased your ranking, all your competitors would follow and in 6 months, there would be no more competitive advantage. For publishers on Google News, which is the case with my website, the news carousel appears more often and AMP articles are seen much more than before. Thanks Google !
  • Speed! Yes, the rendering is almost instantaneous. And I know every non-4G/non-Wifi user on the planet will find this a killer feature to have. It includes SSL by default. And even the good old tag was abandoned in favor ofamp-img> for reasons of speed.

The wrong side

  • Maintenance a carbon copy of your site's content. Yes, AMP lives on its own URL that you host yourself. Only Google will be able to visit it, it's not supposed to be a target to send your visitors to (you could). Problems will appear, and you will realize it later. Also, Google will serve users own copy of your site. They close the door to customized pages for logged in users. They allow you to ping their CDN to update a fresher version. But yes, it's more stuff to manage. Uncool. Although Webmaster Tools has good reports of problems. Update : and this new debugging tool.
  • Following the point above. I thought we were all doing responsive web and not making special mobile pages anymore? I was wrong. AMP is for mobile. So you make a custom mobile page. Until they also accept the desktop. Which I'm guessing you would do media-queries for to work on that too.
  • The AMP-ified version is usually less engaging for the user because reduced to HTML spec. Comparing the page-per-visit of an AMP-ified Vs non-AMP-ified page, users entered faster but exited faster. Maybe it's because there's less clutter on the non-AMP page but that's bad. And I've seen several reports. One could say that it is in fact a good thing. They support stuff like image carousels - I can't live without - but only those provided by Google.
  • The spec started simple and effective. But she becomes out of control and supports more and more existing web features. Good example: notifications to accept Cookies. There is a custom spec for that. It is attached to a user, and makes a CORS request on your backend. And do not forget glycate ! I see no end to the horizon.
  • Harder to monetize. The reason why all these ad networks are loaded in the same page is to earn as much as possible per page view. For example, my ad networks are not yet supported, which means that I am like income in 2004, with a single Adsense unit, with income divided by two.

My advice

If AMP is a success, Google would be the big winner. They would have results that load instantly, dramatically improving the Google Experience™ inviting the user to use even more of Google.
As a developer, I don't see what a mobile AMP copy of my site does for me. It's rather retrograde as a thing.
Hey Google! Let's each go halfway. Users on 2G or GPRS receive AMP-ified, I will provide an AMP site, but we continue to serve a non-AMP-ified version to all other users (ex: Iphone 7 4G), No?
Hell, I'm even going to come up with a spec for that: amp-audience-target-only. LGTM.
Original article écrit par Yvo Schaap translated by JS Staff
 
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