Google has announced that it will be extending its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) initiative to all organic mobile search results in the coming weeks. The search giant launched AMP for news sites six months ago, and its wider rollout will mean faster loading pages for non-publishing content moving forward.
AMP product manager Rudy Galfi said that the huge success of optimised pages for mobile in 2016 had left the team “ready for more.” Google has already set the ball in motion by launching a demo site that allows brands to test AMP experiences and provides developers with the ability to optimise their support for AMP before it rolls out officially to all users.
AMP is considered a huge leap forward for end-user experience, as it cuts load times dramatically. Sites that have published AMP-compatible content have seen these load times reduced by around 400 per cent, and it also uses less data compared to conventional data, as it eschews bandwidth-hogging images and videos.
Ready for more
Another huge plus is the fact that AMP-enabled pages are featured at the very top of search engine page results in a Top Stories carousel, which improves visibility significantly. There are around 150 million AMP documents on Google already, and this is likely to rise much faster now that there is a planned rollout for all users.
While AMP was initially aimed to news publishers earlier this year, various other publishers have already embraced the project, including Disney, Reddit, Fandango, Food Network, TripAdvisor and FlipKart. Experts believe that there will also be a growing demand from Internet users for AMP pages as they learn more about the benefits, such as load times that often come in at under one second.
While load times will be much faster, Galfi has revealed that those who adopt AMP will not see a boost in their ranking. However, the fact that the pages will have a lightning bolt signal to designate their fast-loading capabilities is likely to lead to more clicks and traffic. Google has not revealed a time span for an official rollout, though it is likely before the end of the year.
