5 ms·

I do believe that it is an effort to increase the speed of pages, by preventing content creators from doing things that can harm the user's experience on slower

I do believe that it is an effort to increase the speed of pages, by preventing content creators from doing things that can harm the user's experience on slower connections - I just don't think it's the right way to go about it. It also has the side-effect that all AMP pages must look fairly similar and 'on brand' for Google - which I doubt is an accident.

lllr_finger 9y ago
What's the right way then? When I worked at a media conglomerate, AMP was the only thing that reigned in and enraged the biz-dev and ad-ops departments. I'm still proud that my AMP launch partner pages are out there and serving up content really fast. I hate that it took this to provide that experience, but I prefer it to the FB and AAPL walled garden syndication approach for business and tech reasons.
- falcolas 9y ago
  The right way: influencing ranking by load times for some exemplar (and easily replicable) device and inter-actability events. That way, sites like HN are boosted to the top, while sites which take 10 seconds for their JS frameworks and ads to load before showing text on the screen are penalized.
  - SquareWheel 9y ago
    Page load speeds are a ranking factor.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? It would seem like the reality is that page speed is not an important factor, and that re-tuning that factor would have been a better solution if Google's primary concern was for the health of the open web; not just Google's ecosystem.
      - SquareWheel 9y ago
        >Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? I touched on this confusion elsewhere in this thread, but AMP is actually not a ranking factor. The carousel is a vertical which has been integrated into the page. However, I do agree with you. It's confusing to end-users when it's described as a non-ranking factor because it still appears on the search page. It just doesn't influence organic search. I would also like to see page speed become even more important, as performance is very important to user satisfaction. I spend a lot of time trying to minimize bits wherever possible. It's not just pure loading times either, but perceived speed too. Small effects like animations can make a page feel faster, even if it's technically slower.
        kemayo 9y ago
        Mind you, it's at the top, which I think matters regardless of whether it's technically in the search results. It's an implicit "use AMP and we'll show you first" statement.
        falcolas 9y ago
        Amp results being "in a separate vertical" is a distinction without a difference. You do a search, and the amp sites show up at the top of the results page. They are, quite literally, at the top of the search results.
        SquareWheel 9y ago
        I know, but this is a difference in how normal people and search people talk about SERPs. "Ranking factors" almost always refer to organic search. That's part of where this friction has come from. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see the carousel disappear once Google deems that AMP has become self-sustaining. I think they're using it as motivation to get publishers on board, and then they'll fall back to regular organic ranking afterwards (to which AMP pages will still benefit). But in the mean time it's causing a lot of consternation.
  - lllr_finger 9y ago
    If a site gets 100m unique in a month they will be at the very top. They can then choose to provide a fast site, or slap on a bunch of analytics, tracking, and 3rd party bloat that provides business intelligence and millions in revenue - while staying ranked at the top. They get to have their cake and eat it too, and there was no incentive (before AMP) to reign that in.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      That's the thing about parameters - they can be tuned. The factor for page speed could have been tuned to matter as much, if not more than their unique views, trashing their ranking the moment they started adding bloat. Google appears to have decided not to, in an apparent effort to boost their ecosystem, at the cost of the open web.
- davethedevguy 9y ago
  Google has already indicated that they can measure page speed and use it as a ranking factor [1], i would argue that is a better approach. We're being forced to adopt a new subset of HTML, CSS, JS etc. that has been 'approved' by Google. Stopping the bloat of the average web page is an admirable goal, but creating proprietary standards and penalizing those who don't adopt them is at odds with the fundamental ethos of the open-web. I dislike walled gardens such as Facebook too, but I view AMP in much the same way. If a content creator wishes to host their content on their own server, with their own design, their audience is becoming more and more restricted - whether it is by Google promoting their competitor's AMP pages above regular listings, or because many people only view content behind the walls of Facebook etc. Regardless of how fast a page is, content that conforms to Google's new 'standards' will be shown above regular search results. The article sites The Guardian as an example of this, where the non-AMP page is actually quicker, but appears below AMP results. [1] https://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as-ranking-factor-39708 https://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as...

lllr_finger 9y ago

What's the right way then? When I worked at a media conglomerate, AMP was the only thing that reigned in and enraged the biz-dev and ad-ops departments. I'm still proud that my AMP launch partner pages are out there and serving up content really fast. I hate that it took this to provide that experience, but I prefer it to the FB and AAPL walled garden syndication approach for business and tech reasons.

falcolas 9y ago
The right way: influencing ranking by load times for some exemplar (and easily replicable) device and inter-actability events. That way, sites like HN are boosted to the top, while sites which take 10 seconds for their JS frameworks and ads to load before showing text on the screen are penalized.
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  Page load speeds are a ranking factor.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? It would seem like the reality is that page speed is not an important factor, and that re-tuning that factor would have been a better solution if Google's primary concern was for the health of the open web; not just Google's ecosystem.
    - SquareWheel 9y ago
      >Why add a special ranking for amp pages, if page speed is already a major factor? I touched on this confusion elsewhere in this thread, but AMP is actually not a ranking factor. The carousel is a vertical which has been integrated into the page. However, I do agree with you. It's confusing to end-users when it's described as a non-ranking factor because it still appears on the search page. It just doesn't influence organic search. I would also like to see page speed become even more important, as performance is very important to user satisfaction. I spend a lot of time trying to minimize bits wherever possible. It's not just pure loading times either, but perceived speed too. Small effects like animations can make a page feel faster, even if it's technically slower.
      - kemayo 9y ago
        Mind you, it's at the top, which I think matters regardless of whether it's technically in the search results. It's an implicit "use AMP and we'll show you first" statement.
      - falcolas 9y ago
        Amp results being "in a separate vertical" is a distinction without a difference. You do a search, and the amp sites show up at the top of the results page. They are, quite literally, at the top of the search results.
        SquareWheel 9y ago
        I know, but this is a difference in how normal people and search people talk about SERPs. "Ranking factors" almost always refer to organic search. That's part of where this friction has come from. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see the carousel disappear once Google deems that AMP has become self-sustaining. I think they're using it as motivation to get publishers on board, and then they'll fall back to regular organic ranking afterwards (to which AMP pages will still benefit). But in the mean time it's causing a lot of consternation.
- lllr_finger 9y ago
  If a site gets 100m unique in a month they will be at the very top. They can then choose to provide a fast site, or slap on a bunch of analytics, tracking, and 3rd party bloat that provides business intelligence and millions in revenue - while staying ranked at the top. They get to have their cake and eat it too, and there was no incentive (before AMP) to reign that in.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    That's the thing about parameters - they can be tuned. The factor for page speed could have been tuned to matter as much, if not more than their unique views, trashing their ranking the moment they started adding bloat. Google appears to have decided not to, in an apparent effort to boost their ecosystem, at the cost of the open web.
davethedevguy 9y ago
Google has already indicated that they can measure page speed and use it as a ranking factor [1], i would argue that is a better approach. We're being forced to adopt a new subset of HTML, CSS, JS etc. that has been 'approved' by Google. Stopping the bloat of the average web page is an admirable goal, but creating proprietary standards and penalizing those who don't adopt them is at odds with the fundamental ethos of the open-web. I dislike walled gardens such as Facebook too, but I view AMP in much the same way. If a content creator wishes to host their content on their own server, with their own design, their audience is becoming more and more restricted - whether it is by Google promoting their competitor's AMP pages above regular listings, or because many people only view content behind the walls of Facebook etc. Regardless of how fast a page is, content that conforms to Google's new 'standards' will be shown above regular search results. The article sites The Guardian as an example of this, where the non-AMP page is actually quicker, but appears below AMP results. [1] https://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as-ranking-factor-39708 https://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as...