I mean, it's a closed source algorithm. Google provides guidance directly and indirectly but no one knows how the rank weights work outside of Google.
Amp obviously ranks higher it is the top hit in search for me. Results appear under it...
Amp obviously ranks higher it is the top hit in search for me. Results appear under it...
Second, even if that does happen, the question is whether it would have happened without AMP. In other words, is it a bug in the search algorithm, independent of AMP.
It isn't just a matter of the AMP results being ranked higher — they are segmented from non-AMP pages. The eleven (!) "Top Stories" are all AMP pages.
Under that is "People also searched for > WWDC iPhone 8", which consists of five (!) AMP pages.
Only then does it go into non-AMP pages, starting with Apple's own WWDC page. That's not just rank prioritization. There is a visual break between AMP and non-AMP pages.
It is crazier for you to blindly trust Google on this than it is for us to infer from a pattern we see over and over again, and for you to require that we provide proof that you acknowledge we can't obtain might be crazier.
You're confusing an important thing here: Google places news higher than the original source. Given that WWDC is over, this is actually preferable. It is true that all the news results are AMPed, but there was certainly a time when not everyone was onboard yet and the carousel included non-AMP results (I assume if you can find a news topic sufficiently obscure to have a non-AMP publisher, yet important enough for Top Stories it might show up).
If you instead search for "Iceland hikes" you get a useful one box of info, then an AMPed page then a non-AMPed result and so on.
tl;dr: Popular news publications are certainly all AMPified these days, and Top News is clearly prioritized. Regular search results aren't as clearly AMP leaning.
Not everyone is on board. Many sites don't want AMPified pages. Google takes AMP pages and puts a giant "back" button that takes the website's users back to Google Search rather than deeper into the website.
It breaks URLs and referrers, because the AMP pages are now hosted on google.com, not on the destination websites' own domains.
AMP is a terrible attack on the open WWW. Google is saying, let us appify your content on our own platform (not on your own independent website) and restrict your markup/monitization options or we will drop you out of the top spot of the rankings.
This post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14536679) is an example of how AMP works. Someone has shared a link on HN. It's an AMP link, but I'm reading it on my laptop, and it's still AMP.
The end result is that all users (desktop too) are getting sent to an appified version of the page that restricts advertising/monetization options and markup options. It seems unlikely that the people who designed AMP were unaware of how this would work in practice.
I think that the core motivation for AMP has little to do with speeding up the Web, but is more about ensuring that Google's ads are delivered and so they have some say in which ad competitors are locked out.
It would be interesting to find out how much total traffic ends up on AMP pages, broken down by device type.
Restricted AMP version from the HN link: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-sues-former-aws-vp-non-...
HTML version: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-sues-former-aws-vp-non-...
The most glaringly obvious change is that you never leave google now. There's a nice little wrapper around the site with a back button that leads you straight back to google without even a page reload.
Oh but AMP isn't evil because it's open source. Open source but if you change a single byte in any file it doesn't verify anymore and arguably is no longer AMP.
Google wasn't even planning to show the original URL at all until people made a shitload of noise about it. And it took a month to add because reasons??? It surely looks like quite a difficult feature to implement, showing a URL and all. It must have been quite challenging.
I also enjoy the feature that there's no way to shut AMP off. Why would anyone want to? Maybe this is also to difficult a task for the AMP team to implement.
The goal is to get all the content onto google servers so they can serve ads from the same origin that cannot be blocked.
Amp in combination with chrome's built in "ad blocker" is part of a broader Google strategy to protect their advertising model.
Don't let the haters demotivate you :)
An acquaintance of mine was complaining that Google didn't give him a way to opt his site out of AMP. If he's right, that's a bad move on Google's part. Google should let web site owners choose to not have their content served from google.com.
When I come across an AMP search result on my phone, I'm happy, because I know it will load, and load instantly. Web pages often don't load on cellular internet in India, and a web that works is more important to me than one that's "open". Not to mention that openness is ultimately about accessibility, and if hundreds of millions of people can't access it reliably, it's not open. You may not be able to relate to this since you're based in a developed country, where the Internet works reliably.
Maybe Google is acting in users' best interests, but not site owners'.
My view about AMP is more nuanced than a binary yes/no. Reducing it to a binary choice throws the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe you have a different view, in which case I again respect it, but we should agree to disagree.
Searching "wwdc iphone 8" (not in the "people also searched" list for me) yields about 50% AMP pages. The first result is but the second isn't.
I don't really see a pattern here. The only part where AMP seems mandatory is the news carousel.
That's not really how arguments work. I mean, sure, sometimes it works that way, but other times, like this time, one person is clearly in the wrong, and is simply refusing to listen to the other side.
Unless you have solid evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to believe you over believing Google.
"Pinboard founder Maciej Cegłowski already recreated the Google AMP demo page without the Google AMP JavaScript and, unsurprisingly, it's faster than Google's version."