I just disabled Google AMP

Google AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages – why I have taken it off.

 

Having done all I can for one of my websites, I’ve spent hundreds over the last few years doing whatever it took to get the site to a peak condition.  Any site speed improvements were made and kept on top of.  Better plugins were swapped out and I also implemented Google AMP on to my site.

Prior to the Google AMP installation my site had previously been at a record high but had started to dip a bit in January 2018.  April 2018 I implemented Google AMP.

Since then my rankings continued to decline on this particular site in question.

Yes, this may not be down to the AMP issue, as the rankings had dropped already and continued down.. but at the same time, implementing AMP didn’t have any positive effects either!

The hope was that by implementing AMP, I could have seen rankings increases, traffic increases and more income.. but no..  that certainly was NOT the case.

Google clearly want the best user experience for it’s searchers.. I underestand that.

But when you have AMP you end up with two versions of a web page.  A beautiful well formatted and designed website, and then the AMP version that starts out quite ugly and stripped back (and requires more setup and work to get it looking nice).  When your time is limited it’s not great to have to spend time on something that’s not improving conversions, or may not even be beneficial (for now).

Not only that but not every plugin wants to play happily with AMP, so you find stretched images on table plugins and so on.

 

I persevered with the AMP plugin for a year (and paid $60 a month for support to ensure my site stayed AMP error free).

If you don’t get support then you will notice a swathe of Google errors showing up in your search console and they need fixing..

Today I have had enough and have just followed the following tips from Gulsham Kumar on how to safely remove AMP  (it’s not enought to just remove the plugin as this will throw up 404 errors..!)

Anyway, I have literally just done this so will update in the future how this has gone.

Why have AMP in the first place?

Well with AMP offering super fast loading times, it gives an almost instant load time for mobile users who visit the AMP version of your web page.

I can understand the thinking behind all of that…  but the truth is, your workload will be increased as you’ll need to make sure your AMP versions also look good.. as the stock versions don’t.  While there are templates, I personally don’t see the point in an average stay at home blogger having to maintain essentially 2 versions of a website.

Especially if there are no valid gains to be had.  Especially as I’ve been running it for over  ayear now (along with paying under $60 a month for AMP support, which I didnt mind if it meant positive results).  The AMP guys at AMP for WP would fix any AMP issues keeping Google happy with the AMP version of your website.

Sound good?  I certainly thought so.

After all, if you’re running a real business you do have to keep it right and do whatever is needed.

 

Is AMP showing up for search queries?

Well.. yes… and no…

If you run a news website and want your site to show up on the latest news carousel then AMP is certainly a very much needed thing to stay there… but… for the average blogger who isn’t reliant on riding the latest trends daily using AMP may just not be needed.

I performed some search queries for my target keywords.

Surprise surprise there are ZERO AMP page versions showing up in the top 10.

So I searched again for more queries.. and again no AMP versions are being shown..

So the net result is that I have now taken the steps to get rid of AMP…

 

What do I expect to see?

Over the next 4 or 5 days I expect to see the AMP page indexed status going down in Google.

I don’t expect to see any changes to my non amp pages… although hoping that these may show up for queries and will generate BETTER conversion rates.

Several people reported poorer site conversions after implementing AMP.

• Such as Kinsta here

 

Now.. this doesn’t necessarily mean AMP is bad..

It means that to get the most out of it, you need to put a lot more into it… and if you have the resources then it would be a good thing.

 

For me however.. at this stage of things I don’t feel AMP will help.. it certainly hasn’t been my case for now.

I already have a very fast loading website, with fast hosting, image compression, a fast clean coded responsive theme and for me it feels like that is enought to provide a good fast user experience.

Down the line, if I set up an ecommerce site or news site, I may well re-visit AMP and put in the resources to make sure AMP looks just as good as the non AMP pages of my site.

Resources meaning funds to employ AMP designers and coders to make the AMP versions look just as sweet as the beautiful main website.

So for now.. watch this space.. and I will update as things progress!

 

 

 

 

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