There has been a lot of talk in the SEO industry lately about the progress of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project. The project offers web designers tools and resources to build pages for their mobile site using the AMP format. The overall benefit of AMP pages is that they load much faster than standard mobile pages. Twitter, WordPress and a number of other companies and publishers have gotten involved with the project, which has helped advanced its progression.
The AMP project gained major steam this past week when Google announced during a press conference in San Francisco that it will likely integrate AMP pages into search results in February 2016. Pages built using the AMP format would receive a “Fast” or “Quick” label in mobile search results, similar to how mobile-friendly websites receive the “mobile-friendly” label. Additionally, AMP pages may receive a rankings boost, but this is not clear at this point in time. Google already uses load time as a ranking factor – how much of a ranking factor it is also remains widely unknown.
The AMP project is well within Google’s mission to deliver relevant information to users – especially mobile users – as quickly and intuitively as possible. Webmasters and web designers interested in trying out the AMP format may use the follow demo search engine created by Google (only on mobile devices). SEO professionals should, at the very least, educate themselves on the AMP project and understand its implications.