There are many people out there demanding their eCommerce websites "get on AMP" ASAP. The author is performing a valuable service to employees of such people.

Yeah, but if the hardware store doesn't have screwdrivers anymore, you can see why people might be upset.

Doesn't eBay use AMP? The issue is how you use it. I believe eBay uses it for the entry product page, and then any subsequent hit goes to the website itself.

Same for Reddit; it's a heavily abridged version of the post with maybe 5-10 comments. Then when you actually want to read the comments...you end up on full-scale Reddit instead of just going there in the first place.

I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be getting out of these sorts of implementations if I'm in "researcher" mode.

>> It was never designed or created for dynamic, interactive content, especially e-commerce.

That was true. But its not true any more.

Google is now pushing AMP for pages like that.

I don't think its that. Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. But the point is, even with the speed and possible ranking boost, does it boost conversions? More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.

> Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust.

And why is that?

> More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.

You should not be using AMP for e-commerce, at least not for anything but a static product page.

Again, if you try to drive a nail with a hammer and it doesn't work, the fault isn't on the hammer, it's on you.

> And why is that?

Because you only get a ranking boost if your page

> contains a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag.

and

> is allowed to be cached in the Google AMP cache

Yes, so your brochure site describing your product is an AMP page. But then a link to to the real ecommerce site to actually buy it.

As the otherwise pretty wrong article correctly states: There is no such ranking boost.

Not even for Google News purposes? That's 90% of the AMP links I see.

Was talking about Google Search. Don't know about News. But the original article was about e-commerce.

What if your ecommerce is fronted by news or blog?

News shows up in the Top Stories carousel, not all blogs. If the news is so newsworthy the Top Stories carousel is the right space.

Not correct.

Just look at this example: http://i.imgur.com/84FvZmA.png Notice how the news carousel is completely unrelated, and the pages do not otherwise show up in the search.

Also notice the awesome bug in Google where "Nazi flag" returns "Flag of Germany".

Oh, certainly for English results showing news results for that query is very, very relevant given what is going on in the US with people waving actual nazi flags. You can see that if you e.g. search for a flag that isn't in the news (like danish flag) there is no news result.

I'll report the flag bug.

You’d think so. But many blogs and ecommerce sites have started dressing their content up so that it ends up in that carousel, even if it’s not actually relevant.

Google always ends up putting news from a sailing event from last year in that carousel when I search stuff about my city. Especially awesome in Google News & Weather, where 90% of the news are from last year.

Google seems to just displays the top X search results that happen to be AMP, no matter how old they actually are.

That said, an antitrust complaint was filed with the EU anyway, so we can all just hope your employer is forced to end AMP sooner rather than later, and we can all replace it with a solution that doesn’t rely on any single group’s implementation.

Yeah, but load speed is, and imagine how skewed and unfair it is for Google to load an AMP page from its own cache and compare that to loading a page from someone else's (possibly objectively faster) site. And Google doesn't consider AMP pages cached from sources other than Google to be real AMP pages.

There is no AMP carousel at the top of the page? Are you sure?

This is the ranking boost mentioned: http://i.imgur.com/KsSmYH8.png

"Top stories" relevant to the search are shown, even if they’d otherwise be on page 10 or worse of the actual search.

Any AMP page can end up there, but only AMP pages. This is a ranking boost.

The carousel ranks in position one if it is determined to be the best result. It can rank way below. https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook is a good way to see that.

Original article was about e-commerce. The Top Stories carousel is not relevant to e-commerce since it only contains news articles.

> It can rank way below. https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook is a good way to see that.

It ranks at #2. With articles that otherwise end up at #14 (just checked).

That’s a 12 place ranking boost. You can’t get that anywhere else.

> Original article was about e-commerce.

You’re competing with ebay, and ebay uses AMP on all pages so that they get the #1 spot with the carousel.

Do you have a link where an ebay page shows up in a carousel?

You're taking the guidelines for the Google AMP Cache. Do you have any sources showing that an AMP page hosted by CloudFlare is demoted compared to on hosted on Google?

Yes. To quote the Google AMP Cache FAQ (https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq):

> Google products use the Google AMP Cache

Google products will only mark your page as AMP if you allow it to be included in the Google AMP Cache CDN.

First, how is it anti-trust? And second, it's been shown that faster page loads = better conversions since your bounce rate drops. This is especially true for mobile.

Imagine the scenario, a user lands on the AMP page and a user lands on a responsive page. Both have a question about shipping time. The AMP user has to navigate to a contact form to ask, then submit. The responsive user can just ask in the chat window on the page.

> The AMP user has to navigate to a contact form to ask, then submit. The responsive user can just ask in the chat window on the page.

Why would you use an AMP page for that? It was specifically NOT designed for those use cases.

Now back on your point: if the users who have a question are a small % of the total users, why would you have all users load the heavy chat window on mobile devices with limited screen space?

The point of AMP is to maximize time spent on Google SERP pages. Period. Time is money.

Whatever other benefits it brings are solely for the purpose of pitching it.