Want to Rank higher on Google ?

AMP is the Key 

Mobile Internet usage has been increasing steadily to become an integral part of a Smartphone and Tablet users’ life. According to the latest studies (February 2018) over 59.7% of web page views all over the world has been over mobile devices.

More specifically, over 65% of Google searches are conducted on mobiles according recent report by Hit-wise. Hence Google’s back-end search algorithms play a very vital part in increasing profile and website visibility. 

Changes in Google’s Ranking Algorithm 

Advertising accounts for a large portion of Google’s revenues. In 2014 Google report around USD 66 billion in advertising revenues. As a rule, advertisers tend to pay less for ads on mobile platform as trend indicates that the ratio of click to customer conversion is very low. But Google’s latest tweak to its search algorithm has changed this perspective.

As of 2016 Google has modified its algorithms to favor websites that are mobile-friendly. This enables web pages and content to be optimized for mobile device screens. This is Google’s way of capitalizing on the rise in mobile Internet users.

Since Google plays a very large role in driving web traffic, this major change in the way Google filters and ranks it’s search results has pushed businesses and e-Commerce sites to modify their websites to fit this criteria. 

Accelerated Mobile pages (AMP) – Google’s solution to prioritizing ranking

Accelerated Mobile Pages a.k.a AMP’s are stripped down versions of the main website. In other words they are ghost websites. Essentially the mobile-friendly AMP web pages loads the story content first. It then proceeds to load videos, then advertisements and then any content that is very data intensive.

On the plus side, the ads do not pop up on the mobile site and there aren’t multiple trackers dragging down page load times.

On AMP mobile-friendly pages, instead of multiple trackers there is one piece of code that shares tracking data with multiple analytics bodies like Adobe analytics, ComScore etc. 

The Pros of Accelerated Mobile pages (AMP) 

While on mobile networks, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets sometimes take a very long time to load even simple static pages. Content rich sites take even longer. AMP’s are the perfect solution to increased latency issues on mobile networks.

AMP’s are fast load four times faster and use ten times less data. Furthermore, due to Google’s latest ranking system, the web pages would rank better in searches. 

How AMP’s work ?

Usually, when a Google search is initiated, Google displays a list of results based on it’s ranking algorithm. Traditionally when the user click on the desired link, Google directs the user away from it’s site on to site indicated by the link address.

AMP pages however are cached in Google’s own servers. So when the user click the desired AMP optimized result, they get directed to Google’s cached AMP content.

For example, a business’s AMP site will have the following address -

Business.com/businesspage/amp

Once a user clicks this mobile-friendly link, Google directs the user to it’s AMP cache -

google.com/amp/Business.com/businesspage/amp

This serves a two-pronged purpose –

1. It keeps the user on Google server instead of switching to the business main site or app

2. It enables Google to amass a wealth of content its servers

Google has also launched its own open source AMP to help businesses modify their own websites to avail the advantages of AMP’s and get higher visibility on Google searches.