How Google may be slowing down AMP by not using direct links to publishers

One of the biggest disadvantages for publishers in using AMP — the accelerated mobile pages format — is that Google will not show a publisher’s actual URL when displaying AMP pages. Google says this is so AMP pages load quickly. However, using a publisher’s URL might hardly slow a page down. In fact, using Google’s URL might actually cause AMP pages to load more slowly.

Google is serves AMP pages from its cache, which causes AMP page URLs to appear as if they are from Google. It does this, because Google claims that this means the page will load more quickly than serving from the publisher’s site.

Would skipping the Google cache really hurt? What if Google didn’t use its own cache? What if it sent people directly to a publisher’s AMP page on the publisher’s site. Would that really slow the experience down that much?

Our testing suggests that the experience wouldn’t be slower and, in fact, might even be faster. But Google says it has no plans to make a change.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is a journalist and analyst who has covered the digital and search marketing space since 1996. He is a cofounder of and advisor to Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. conference series. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog (and he keeps his disclosures page there). He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.