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The Top Ten Pros And Cons Of Google Amp

May 31, 2023
Google AMP, which stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages,” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; mobile pages that function at a far higher speed than ever before. But what does that mean for business? Like almost anything, Google AMP has both benefits and drawbacks. This alone is unavoidable, but knowing what those pros and cons are is what will determine whether or not it’s right for your business.

Pros:

Speed: By breaking down web pages to their most basic, uncluttered forms, Google AMP provides some of the fastest running web pages available.

Faster is better: Google has always made speed a priority, and having a page that runs up to four times faster than other mobile friendly sites will greatly improve your mobile SEO.

Better spread of content: Publishers have had to compete with Facebook after the introduction of Instant Articles, but Google AMP makes content more widely accessible. Now articles can be more widely reached in search results as opposed to just on Facebook, making it easier for publishers to spread their content.

It’s open-source: This just means that the project itself has room to grow as problems pop up. Inevitably they will, but the idea is that current limitations will be resolved sooner rather than later by allowing solutions to come from anyone, not just Google’s team.

It has a promising future: Mobile friendly sites already rank higher in a mobile search, and while mobile SEO does not account for AMP pages at the moment, it’s fair to assume that in the future these speedy little pages will take the top ranks on any search engine.

Cons:

It’s not for everyone: Google AMP provides the best results for sites that are blogging or news and article based. This means that, while these sites will be running faster and better than ever, it may be too restrictive for brand sites or others with a more complex design.

It’s new: We’ve been primarily trained to believe that the newest thing is always the best, but new has its drawbacks. AMP is going to have plenty of kinks before most of them are sorted out down the road. However, because it is open-source, ideally AMP’s team will be resolving these issues with the help of dissatisfied consumers.

External style sheets and Javascript: Or, rather, lack of them. AMP pages run quickly because of the simplicity, but this may mean sacrificing design. This in turn means that if the web design is as important to the brand as the content itself, you might just be out of luck.

It impacts Domain Authority: Google AMP’s URLs are set up so that the link to the article is actually added on to Google’s URL, meaning that the user is really viewing it through Google and not the original publisher. This essentially means that the publisher’s site will receive fewer links than before in respect to Domain Authority and ultimately SEO.

AMP only accepts well-constructed HTML: While this is arguably a pro in that only the best and fastest sites will work for AMP, it does create a bit of an exclusive Abercrombie feel of “If you can’t wear small sizes, you can’t wear our clothes.” It’s great in that it will make sure only the best sites can be used for AMP, but it means that now more time and money will need to be spent on improving pages in order to be AMP-ready.

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