This Wednesday, Google stated that their Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which can be accessed from Google Search, can now load twice as fast as they previously could.
In October 2015, Google first revealed their AMP Project and have since been consistently working to create new features to drive AMP across the web and their products. AMP was initially designed to circumvent sluggish browser load times, which would allow stories to be accessed quickly via mobile browsing. This gives users a better experience.
AMP, at first glance, mirrors components of Facebook’s Instant Articles and Snapchat’s Discover channel, but innately, their tools are not supposed to host content. Instead, the project uses specially-cached links, which can reduce the overall time it takes content to move from its host to the consumer.
The Progression of Google AMP
September 2016 saw the launch of AMP support and in just eight months, Google has significantly decreased the content rendering time. Google says they accomplished this by optimizing server-side rendering, decreasing bandwidth usage from images by 50% while maintaining quality, and applying the Brotli compression algorithm.
The Brotli compression algorithm, announced in September 2015 by Google, can condense data by up to 25% by using a dictionary containing the most common words and syllables in key languages like English, Spanish, Chinese, and others. The algorithm also uses common phrases used in languages like HTML and JavaScript, which allows for greater success. This matters to those in the SEO world because the longer a website takes to load, the more likely a potential client is to abandon waiting for that site and move on to a different one.
In addition to sharing their success in speed, Google also announced at Google I/O this month that have added new platforms and websites to the AMP family. There are already more than two billion AMP sites and other search giants like Bing, Baidu, Sogou and Yahoo also support AMP.
Most recently, China’s Tencent Qzone and Weibo are introducing AMP pages while Tumblr has announced launching 340 million blogs on AMP this week. Twitter is also linking to AMP pages on its new mobile web app while also launching AMP support for its Android and iOS applications.
Overall, Google has successfully kept their AMP project moving a very positive direction as momentum continues to gain. Google plans to share their AMP roadmap next week in regards to the upcoming quarter. Widespread AMP usage has the potential to improve the mobile browsing environment for all as it will create a more streamlined experience.
If you have any more questions about Google’s AMP updates or how to improve your digital presence, contact us at Hall Analysis.