Earlier this year, Google attempted to remedy issues with mobile reading by rolling out Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for news sites. Now that AMP has been made available for more areas of the web, we need to ask how this will impact future mobile and responsive sites. 

What Is AMP?

Google is now ready for the next stage of Accelerated Mobile Pages and is planning to roll the technology out across the rest of the Internet. This part of the AMP project is still a developer preview with plans to launch it to the public later in the year, making it a mainstream web browsing technology for mobile devices.
David Steele, Android Headlines

AMP is an open source initive aimed at improving the mobile experience. It uses limited HTML and a library of web components for increased speed. You will need to maintain two separate sets of code to implement AMP even though AMP has responsive qualities. 

Who's Using AMP?

Google lists out some of the clients taking advantage of this existing functionality. This includes companies such as:

In addition to the players above, you can find advertising, tech, analytics, CMS platforms, and video companies all participating. 

The Benefits

• AMP pages are 4x faster, use 10x less data compared to non-AMP pages
• On average AMP pages load in less than one second
• 90 percent of AMP publishers experience higher CTRs
• 80 percent of AMP publishers experience higher ad viewability rates

Implementing & Testing

GitHub is your best bet if you want to take a shot at AMP yourself. 

Not sure if you did it right? Google provides some validation tool options. 

Do I Need An AMP Site?

AMP is similar to Apple News and Facebook Instant articles meaning if you currently support those, you may as well also include AMP. Since this is a newer idea, it may be best to keep it on the radar in the meantime. 

If you have any questions about your website's SEO or mobile experience, let us know.