Mobile search results in Google are looking different thanks to the ability of smartphones and networks processing information at a faster rate. To take advantage, Google has begun to highlight what are called Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) results, which offers “instant” articles on the mobile web—loading four times faster and using 10-times less data, allowing AMP articles to be quick and painless.

How Google’s AMP Results Work

In short, it works like this: The scrolling articles are stripped of HTML to make them quick and responsive mobile articles. The carousel Google shows you through AMP results involves scrollable articles that load quickly and allow the user to jump from one article to the next, which is why the HTML is cleaned out, to allow users to quickly find the data they need. Websites hosted by WordPress.com are automatically able to support AMPs, and VIP WordPress customers can enable support for AMP. AMP is mostly targeted to news articles, so publishers will benefit from having access to quick articles that load easily, such as bad cell reception areas.

The “/amp/” at the end of a URL optimizes the content to a stripped-down version, which helps with the four-times faster load time. But, this does not take away from the ability to support ads. AMP has worked with ad networks such as Outbrain, AOL, OpenX, DoubleClick, and AdSense to create optimized tags for mobile pages. Ad tags and Analytics tools are still an option on AMP-enabled pages as well.

3 Publisher Positives to Google AMP Results

Due to the faster-loading times of AMP articles, publishers can see more page views, shares and engagement with content from readers. AMP content has the advantage of being shown “above the fold,” or at the top of Google searches, because they load faster and are in a carousel. This makes AMP content appear higher in the return list to mobile users, which is of course a huge SEO benefit.

Currently, AMP articles do not have a paid placement option in the carousel, but that does not mean we won’t see that in the future. AMP-enabled articles have an icon in the SERPs that indicates the article is built on AMP, so this may be a way to show paid placement of AMP articles as well. Regardless, below are a few ways publishers can benefit:

The AMP Option is Available to All

Publishers can see many positive attributes of using AMP-enabled articles. Anyone willing to learn a new, simpler format can construct their content in AMP-style. Facebook, for example, limits participation in its Instant Articles feature to a select set of publishers. So now with Google, any publisher can play. Developer contributions are also accepted – AMP is open source. Anyone who has ideas to improve AMP can contribute and AMP’s feature set will readily adapt to the changing publishing world.

Content Gets More Viewers and can Compete with Facebook

It has been shown that AMP-enabled content gets to more readers. Google is now able to compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles, which will in turn improve the reach benefits for publishers since the searchers can be clicked on in Google and not just in the social media platform.

Analytics Are on the Horizon for AMP Pages

Publishers will be able to show proof of AMP successes soon because analytics are coming. Analytics providers such as comScore, Adobe Analytics, Parse.ly and Chartbeat are updating their services to inform publishers on how well their AMP content is doing against the rest. Luckily, AMP specifications provide instructions for supporting your current AMP analytics vendors and how to support your own custom analytics solutions.

Along with AMP-specific analytics, more features and formatting options are coming as well. Extended and experimental components are being released for formatting pages via tags.

Mobile vs. AMP: Does Your Business Need Both?

The question of whether to keep your mobile website pages or not may cross your mind, but the answer is a clear “yes.” This is currently a Google initiative, and other sites have not announced the use of their own AMP results. If you have mobile sites, it’s important to keep in mind that AMP pages are much more bare bones than regular site pages. This changes the user experience drastically, which makes it crucial you keep both mobile sites and AMP pages running. Visit this article from Moz to learn more.

Getting Started with Google’s AMP Results

In order to offer AMP-enabled content, you will need to manage two versions of each article page. You will want to hide your AMP pages from your website’s navigation since all esthetics are stripped for quick downloading.

Extras such as JavaScript, forms and on-page comments are restricted on AMP-enabled pages, and you’ll probably have to re-write your site template to accommodate these restrictions. There are special amp-font extensions, image elements and custom tags for locally embedding videos, among other template updates necessary to properly support AMP-enabled content. You can learn more here.

The Takeaway

AMP-enabled article pages provide quick, easy and simple pages of content to users without bogging down their device with JavaScript, complex HTML and numerous ads. AMP content is pulled from searches and provided in a scrollable carousel to access information.

Mobile is the focus for this content, which forces the website owners to decide between mobile site pages or a responsive design website. Responsive design is the most cost-effective and simplest way to do this. Rather than managing multiple pages of the same content, the content automatically responds to the size of the device being used.

Finally, the pros and cons will depend on what your company or client is looking to improve. Users want fast and simple answers, so AMP content may be the way of mobile in the future.

What do you think? Will AMP content be the way of the future for mobile? Let us know in the comments below!