You may have seen Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) already, marked with a green lightning bolt, floating around at the top of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) when you do a Google search.
But what are they?
Well, according to The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, “The AMP Project is an open source initiative that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere.”
These pages load around four times faster and use only a tenth of the data, compared with browsing standard mobile web pages. They also look great because they’re completely stripped down – loading pretty much instantly and leaving you with exactly what you were after.
The AMP Project definitely seems like a direct response to Facebook’s ‘Instant Articles’ that it’s looking to slowly roll out to publishers this year. Although currently somewhat limited in terms of functionality and “flashiness” compared with Instant Articles, the AMP project offers a huge opportunity for bringing this media format to the open web.
So, why should we care?
“Sure, they load pretty fast but how will this benefit me or my business?”
Buyer behaviour is continually moving and adapting. If we don’t see what we want on the first page, or even the first three results, we amend our search term or take a different route altogether.
All of the big technology players, Google in particular, are constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve in improving our online experience. In a bid to provide more relevant results quicker and more elegantly, AMP are now considered as an important ranking factor on a mobile device.
AMP-enabled pages are getting the royal treatment in SERPs, appearing in a carousel type format above all other search results. Once you have clicked on one of the results, you can swipe left and right between other relevant AMP-enabled pages.
This fundamental change in how we search the web will allow us to focus more of our energy on creating good quality and relevant content – instead of pumping time and money into leapfrogging search positions and trying to hook users with carefully crafted page names.
Although Facebook’s ‘Instant Articles’ are still only accessible to some hand-picked publishers, Accelerated Mobile Pages are available to everyone. Take a look at The AMP Project to learn more and if you’re not particularly HTML savvy and have your website built on WordPress, there’s a very useful plugin to make the process a little easier!
The affect AMP will have on the buyer journey is, as of yet, unknown. Though, knowing Google, it won’t be particularly long before we see this system become increasingly sophisticated.
Why not come along to one of our Google Tools training sessions? Book your place online or by calling 01202 684 009 to speak with a friendly member of the team.
