Tags: ranking

Google AMP: how Google tried to fix the web by taking it over - The Verge

AMP succeeded spectacularly. Then it failed. And to anyone looking for a reason not to trust the biggest company on the internet, AMP’s story contains all the evidence you’ll ever need.

This is a really good oral history of how AMP soured Google’s reputation.

Full disclosure: I’m briefly cited:

“When it suited them, it was open-source,” says Jeremy Keith, a web developer and a former member of AMP’s advisory council. “But whenever there were any questions about direction and control… it was Google’s.”

As an aside, this article contains a perfect description of the company cultures of Facebook, Apple, and Google:

“You meet with a Facebook person and you see in their eyes they’re psychotic,” says one media executive who’s dealt with all the major platforms. “The Apple person kind of listens but then does what it wants to do. The Google person honestly thinks what they’re doing is the best thing.”

Spot. On.

What happened when we disabled Google AMP at Tribune Publishing?

Shockingly little. So you should try it, too.

Google AMP is dead! AMP pages no longer get preferential treatment in Google search

I don’t know if AMP is quite dead yet, but it feels like it would be a mercy to press a pillow down on its face.

Google’s stated intention was to rank sites that load faster but they ended up ranking sites that use AMP instead. And the largest advertising company in the world dictating how websites can be built is not a way to a healthier and more open web.

Au revoir, mon AMPmour? — Ethan Marcotte

I’ll say again: deprioritizing AMP in favor of Core Web Vitals is a very good thing. But it’s worth noting that Google’s taken its proprietary document format, and swapped it out for a proprietary set of performance statistics that has even less external oversight.

The End of AMP – lafoo – ramblings about the online world

Google provided a distinct advantage to sites using AMP – priority placement on the world’s largest traffic source – Google search. I’ve had the pleasure of working with more than twenty thousand publishers in the five years since AMP’s launch, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a single reason that a publisher uses AMP other than to obtain this priority placement. Let me package that up for you – Google, the most dominant search engine globally – used that dominant market position to encourage publishers to adopt technology so that Google could store and serve publisher’s content on Google’s domain. How is that legal? Well, I’m not a lawyer, but it possibly isn’t.

The death of AMP can’t come soon enough.

If you’re currently using AMP, you’ll be able to get rid of that monstrosity in May, and if you aren’t, you’ll now be competing for search positions previously unavailable to you. For publishers, it is a win-win.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Timing for bringing page experience to Google Search

Good news: as of May 2021, page speed (or core web vitals, if you must) will be a ranking factor in Google Search.

Even better news: at the same time, Google AMP will lose its unfairly privileged position in the top stories carousel. Hopefully this marks the beginning of the end for Google’s failed experiment in forcing publishers to use their tech.

Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google – The Markup

I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for ages so I didn’t realise quite how much of a walled garden Google search has become.

41% of the first page of Google search results is taken up by Google products.

This is some excellent reporting. The data and methodology are entirely falsifiable so feel free to grab the code and replicate the results.

Note the fear with which publishers talk about Google (anonymously). It’s the same fear that app developers exhibit when talking about Apple (anonymously).

Ain’t centralisation something?

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Evaluating page experience for a better web

This is excellent news for sites that were strong-armed into creating AMP pages just to get into the Top Stories carousel:

As part of this update, we’ll also incorporate the page experience metrics into our ranking criteria for the Top Stories feature in Search on mobile, and remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories eligibility.

This update doesn’t arrive until next year, but the message is clear: fast websites will be rewarded in search. I’ll be glad to see an end to AMP’s blackmail tactics.

How Google Pagespeed works: Improve Your Score and Search Engine Ranking

Ben shares the secret of SEO. Spoiler: the villain turns out to be Too Much JavaScript. Again.

Time to Interactive (TTI) is the most impactful metric to your performance score.

Therefore, to receive a high PageSpeed score, you will need a speedy TTI measurement.

At a high level, there are two significant factors that hugely influence TTI:

• The amount of JavaScript delivered to the page
• The run time of JavaScript tasks on the main thread

Lighthouse | Eric Bailey

What if accessibility were a ranking signal for Google search results?

Here’s a thought: what if Google put its thumb on the scale again, only this time for accessibility? What if it treated the Lighthouse accessibility score as a first-class ranking metric?

Google AMP lowered our page speed, and there’s no choice but to use it - unlike kinds

What happens when you’re AMP pages are slower than your regular pages …but you’re forced to use AMP anyway if you want to appear in the top stories carousel.

AMP isn’t about speed. It’s about control.

The elephant in the room here is pre-rendering: that’s why Google aren’t using page speed alone as a determining factor for what goes in the carousel.

We are all trapped in the “Feed” – Om on Tech

No matter where I go on the Internet, I feel like I am trapped in the “feed,” held down by algorithms that are like axes trying to make bespoke shirts out of silk. And no one illustrates it better than Facebook and Twitter, two more services that should know better, but they don’t. Fake news, unintelligent information and radically dumb statements are getting more attention than what matters. The likes, retweets, re-posts are nothing more than steroids for noise. Even when you are sarcastic in your retweets or re-shares, the system has the understanding of a one-year-old monkey baby: it is a vote on popularity.

Campaign. — Ethan Marcotte

Ethan is understandably dubious about Google’s recent announcement regarding the relaxation of the AMP’s iron fist.

Because it’s great to hear the AMP team make some overtures toward a more open web—and personally, I’d like to thank them sincerely for doing so. But if we’re swapping one set of Google-owned criteria for another set of slightly more permissive Google-owned criteria, I’m not sure how much will have changed.

The Two Faces of AMP - TimKadlec.com

So, to recap, the web community has stated over and over again that we’re not comfortable with Google incentivizing the use of AMP with search engine carrots. In response, Google has provided yet another search engine carrot for AMP.

This wouldn’t bother me if AMP was open about what it is: a tool for folks to optimize their search engine placement. But of course, that’s not the claim. The claim is that AMP is “for the open web.”

Spot on, Tim. Spot on.

If AMP is truly for the open web, de-couple it from Google search entirely. It has no business there.

Look, AMP, you’re either a tool for the open web, or you’re a tool for Google search. I don’t mind if you’re the latter, but please stop pretending you’re something else.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Helping users easily access content on mobile

Two pieces of good news from Google:

1. 85% of websites qualify as mobile-friendly, so there’s no longer a need to explicitly label them as such in search results.
2. Google will down-rank sites that have annoying pop-overs demanding you download an app or sign up to an email newsletter when you’re trying to read the damn page.

Common mistakes in smartphone sites

Good news from Google: it’s going to start actively penalising sites for perpetrating the worst practices for mobile e.g. redirecting a specific “desktop” URL to a the homepage of the mobile site, or for shoving a doorslam “download our app” message at users.

I wish that we could convince people not to do that crap on the basis of it being, well, crap. But when all else fails, saying “Google says so” carries a lot of weight (see also: semantics, accessibility, yadda, yadda, yadda).

Web Rankings Shakeup: It's About Time

I suspect David Sleight was hovering over Catherine Holahan's shoulder while she wrote this.