Celebrating AMP: A year in review
A lot can happen in a year when people unite around a common cause. In the case of the open source Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, born out of conversations with European publishers through the Digital News Initiative, that means improving the mobile web for everyone. In a world where we rely on nearly 7 billion small screens that’s a tall order--but we’re toasting the first anniversary of AMP with progress the entire initiative can feel good about.
From day one, a key focus for AMP has been speed. Slow loading sites are arguably one of the most frustrating things about the mobile web. Recent Google research shows that 53% of people will leave a site that fails to load in three seconds or less. That’s the worst of all worlds for users, businesses, publishers, websites and the mobile web as a whole.
For publishers, who were the first to get on board with AMP, the benefits of fast-loading content are super-tangible. In this case study, the Washington Post reported a 23% increase in mobile search users who return within 7 days.
And in this case study, one of Europe’s biggest native advertising platforms, plista, conducted its own experiment among premium publishers like n-tv.de, faz.net, abendzeitung.de, and golem.de to measure AMP’s impact on web app widget speed and profitability. Average click-through rates for publishers improved by 220%, while one saw an increase of 600% after the implementation of AMP.
To date the AMP project has been a story about momentum. This is clear in everything from the pace of releases of the open source code to the number of participants embracing the AMP format. From Pinterest to Reddit to Bing and Ebay, reports of success after adopting AMP have rolled in in recent months.
At Google, we’re doing our part too. In February, we launched AMP in the “Top Stories” section of Google Search, delivering news in a fast and reliable way. In August, we previewed linking to AMPs across the entire mobile search results page. And this month we’re excited to be rolling out that faster experience to mobile users across Europe.
Now when you search on your mobile device, you’ll see a label that indicates a page is AMP’d. This doesn’t change Search results but will show you which sites have pages that are ready to load lightning fast.
Today AMP pages load from Google Search in less than one second on average. Beyond just saving time with fast loading pages, AMP also saves data -- AMP pages on Search use 10 times less data than the equivalent non-AMP page.
To date we have over 600 million AMP documents created by sites all over the world (232 locales and 104 languages). These pages cover news content, retail, travel, recipes, general knowledge and entertainment. That’s a lot of fast-loading pages!
The open source initiative is thriving because there is a strong community behind it getting involved in everything from working groups to contributing to the Github page with suggestions, feedback and code spec.
While the first year of the AMP Project has gotten off to a good start, there still remains a lot of work ahead. This roadmap is a good way to stay up to date on what is happening next. We look forward to returning in a year’s time with even more awesome progress as we work together to make the web great for everyone.
To find out more about AMP, check out ampproject.org. For more product advancements from the Digital News Initiative, check out digitalnewsinitiative.com.
