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.
During the workshop, several online publishers indicated that if it weren’t for the privileged position in the Google Search carousel given to AMP content, they would not publish in that format.
More great reporting from Adrianne Jeffries at The Markup.
An engineer at a major news publication who asked not to be named because the publisher had not authorized an interview said Google’s size is what led publishers to use AMP.
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?
The bait’n’switch is laid bare. First, AMP is positioned as a separate format. Then, only AMP pages are allowed ranking in the top stories carousel. Now, let’s pretend none of that ever happened and act as though AMP is just another framework. Oh, and those separate AMP pages that you made? Turns out that was all just “transitional” and you’re supposed to make your entire site in AMP now.
I would genuinely love to know how the Polymer team at Google feel about this pivot. Everything claimed in this blog post about AMP is actually true of Polymer (and other libraries of web components that don’t have the luxury of bribing developers with SEO ranking).
Some alternative facts from the introduction:
AMP isn’t another “channel” or “format” that’s somehow not the web.
Weird …because that’s exactly how it was sold to us (as a direct competitor to similar offerings from Apple and Facebook).
It’s not an SEO thing.
That it outright false. Ask any company actually using AMP why they use it.
It’s not a replacement for HTML.
And yet, the article goes on to try convince you to replace HTML with AMP.
When’s the last time you can remember that a framework was given preferential treatment like AMP has been given? You could argue that it’s a format, like RSS, but no one has ever tried to convince developers to build their entire site in RSS.
I’m with Tim on his nervousness about Google’s ever-increasing power in the world of web standards.
Monocultures don’t benefit anyone.
A small-scale conspiracy theory from the innards of Google.
I have been elected to the AMP advisory committee. My reign of terror begins!
Thinking about the end game.
But AMP doesn’t trust us.
A proposal to tackle the injustice of Google AMP pages receiving preferential treatment in Google search results.