Using AMP? Try our new webpage tester
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a great way to make content on your website accessible in an extremely fast way. To help ensure that your AMP implementation is working as expected , Search Console now has an enhanced AMP testing tool.
This testing tool is mobile-friendly and uses Google’s live web-search infrastructure to analyze the AMP page with the real Googlebot. The tool tests the validity of the AMP markup as well as any structured data on the page. If issues are found, click on them to see details, and to have the line in the source-code highlighted. For valid AMP pages, we may also provide a link to a live preview of how this page may appear in Google’s search results.
With the share button on the bottom right, you can now share a snapshot of the results that you’re currently seeing with others. This makes it easier to discuss issues with your team, whether they’re regular occurrences or one-time quirks that you need to iron out. Just click the share button and pass on the URL for this test snapshot. This share feature is now also available in the mobile-friendly testing tool.
We hope this tool makes it easier to create great AMP’d content while finding and resolving issues that may appear on your AMP pages. For any questions, feel free to drop by our webmaster’s help forum.
Posted by Ofir Roval & Yaniv Loewenstein, Search Console team
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): one year on – stats and infographic
We’ve written an awful lot about Google’s open source accelerated mobile pages project (better know as Google AMP) over that last 12 months.
AMP for eCommerce
In October 2015, Google announced a little thing called AMP. Initially, AMP started with a focus on news pages, but that focus rapidly changed towards every page of your website. That doesn’t just go for news websites. It seems like AMP is here to stay and every website needs to optimize for it. That also goes […]
Webmaster Forums Top AMP Questions
It has been busy here at Google Webmaster Central over the last few weeks, covering a lot of details about Accelerated Mobile Pages that we hope you have found useful. The topics have included:
- What is AMP?
- How to get started with Accelerated Mobile Pages
- How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site
- How to best evaluate issues with your Accelerated Mobile Pages
- Top 8 things to consider when you AMPlify a site
- How to set up Analytics on your AMP page
- How to set up Ads on your AMP page
We’ve also been seeing a few AMP questions coming to the Webmaster forums about getting started using AMP on Google Search. To help, we’ve compiled some of the most common questions we’ve seen:
Q: I’m considering creating AMP pages for my website. What is the benefit? What types of sites and pages is AMP for?
Users love content that loads fast and without any fuss – using the AMP format may make it more compelling for people to consume and engage with your content on mobile devices. Research has shown that 40% of users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. The Washington Post observed an 88% decrease in article loading time and a 23% increase in returning users from mobile search from adopting AMP.
The AMP format is great for all types of static web content such as news, recipes, movie listings, product pages, reviews, videos, blogs and more.
Q: We are getting errors logged in Search Console for AMP pages; however, we already fixed these issues. Why are we still seeing errors?
The short answer is that changes to your AMP pages take about a week to be updated in Search Console. For a more in-depth answer on why, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller shared a detailed post on Search Console latency challenges.
Q: Our AMP pages are not showing up on Google Search. What should we do?
Only valid AMP pages will be eligible to show on Google Search. Check the validity of your AMP pages by using the AMP HTML Web Validator, the Chrome or Opera Extension or through a more automated process such as a cron job to make sure all new content is valid.
While it’s good practise overall to include schema.org structured data in your AMP pages (we recommend JSON-LD), it’s especially important for news publishers. News content that includes valid markup properties are eligible to be shown within the Top Stories section in Google Search results. To test your structured data, try using the structured data testing tool.
If you have more questions that are not answered here, share your feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
Webmaster Forums Top AMP Questions
It has been busy here at Google Webmaster Central over the last few weeks, covering a lot of details about Accelerated Mobile Pages that we hope you have found useful. The topics have included:
- What is AMP?
- How to get started with Accelerated Mobile Pages
- How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site
- How to best evaluate issues with your Accelerated Mobile Pages
- Top 8 things to consider when you AMPlify a site
- How to set up Analytics on your AMP page
- How to set up Ads on your AMP page
We’ve also been seeing a few AMP questions coming to the Webmaster forums about getting started using AMP on Google Search. To help, we’ve compiled some of the most common questions we’ve seen:
Q: I’m considering creating AMP pages for my website. What is the benefit? What types of sites and pages is AMP for?
Users love content that loads fast and without any fuss – using the AMP format may make it more compelling for people to consume and engage with your content on mobile devices. Research has shown that 40% of users abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. The Washington Post observed an 88% decrease in article loading time and a 23% increase in returning users from mobile search from adopting AMP.
The AMP format is great for all types of static web content such as news, recipes, movie listings, product pages, reviews, videos, blogs and more.
Q: We are getting errors logged in Search Console for AMP pages; however, we already fixed these issues. Why are we still seeing errors?
The short answer is that changes to your AMP pages take about a week to be updated in Search Console. For a more in-depth answer on why, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller shared a detailed post on Search Console latency challenges.
Q: Our AMP pages are not showing up on Google Search. What should we do?
Only valid AMP pages will be eligible to show on Google Search. Check the validity of your AMP pages by using the AMP HTML Web Validator, the Chrome or Opera Extension or through a more automated process such as a cron job to make sure all new content is valid.
While it’s good practise overall to include schema.org structured data in your AMP pages (we recommend JSON-LD), it’s especially important for news publishers. News content that includes valid markup properties are eligible to be shown within the Top Stories section in Google Search results. To test your structured data, try using the structured data testing tool.
If you have more questions that are not answered here, share your feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
8 tips to AMPlify your clients
Here is our list of the top 8 things to consider when helping your clients AMPlify their websites (and staying ahead of their curiosity!) after our announcement to expand support for Accelerated Mobile Pages.
- Getting started can be simple
If a site uses a popular Content Management System (CMS), getting AMP pages up and running is as straightforward as installing a plug-in. Sites that use custom HTML or that are built from scratch will require additional development resources.
- Not all types of sites are suitable
AMP is great for all types of static web content such as news, recipes, movie listings, product pages, reviews, videos, blogs and more. AMP is less useful for single-page apps that are heavy on dynamic or interactive features, such as route mapping, email or social networks.
- You don’t have to #AMPlify the whole site
Add AMP to a client’s existing site progressively by starting with simple, static content pages like articles, products, or blog posts. These are the “leaf” pages that users access through platforms and search results, and could be simple changes that also bring the benefits of AMP to the website. This approach allows you to keep the homepage and other “browser” pages that might require advanced, non-AMP dynamic functionality.
If you’re creating a new, content-heavy website from scratch, consider building the whole site with AMP from the start. To begin with, check out the getting started guidelines.
- The AMP Project is open source and still evolving
If a site’s use case is not supported in the AMP format yet, consider filing a feature request on GitHub, or you could even design a component yourself.
- AMP pages might need to meet additional requirements to show up in certain places
In order to appear in Google’s search results, AMP pages need only be valid AMP HTML. Some products integrating AMP might have further requirements than the AMP validation. For example, you’ll need to mark up your AMP pages as Article markup with Structured Data to make them eligible for the Google Top Stories section.
- There is no ranking change on Search
Whether a page or site has valid and eligible AMP pages has no bearing on the site’s ranking on the Search results page. The difference is that web results that have AMP versions will be labeled with an 
icon.
- AMP on Google is expanding globally
AMP search results on Google will be rolling out worldwide when it launches in the coming weeks. The Top Stories carousel which shows newsy and fresh AMP content is already available in a number of countries and languages.
- Help is on hand
There’s a whole host of useful resources that will help if you have any questions:
Webmasters Help Forum: Ask questions about AMP and Google’s implementation of AMP
Stack Overflow: Ask technical questions about AMP
GitHub: Submit a feature request or contribute
What are your top tips to #AMPlify pages? Let us know in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
8 tips to AMPlify your clients
Here is our list of the top 8 things to consider when helping your clients AMPlify their websites (and staying ahead of their curiosity!) after our announcement to expand support for Accelerated Mobile Pages.
- Getting started can be simple
If a site uses a popular Content Management System (CMS), getting AMP pages up and running is as straightforward as installing a plug-in. Sites that use custom HTML or that are built from scratch will require additional development resources.
- Not all types of sites are suitable
AMP is great for all types of static web content such as news, recipes, movie listings, product pages, reviews, videos, blogs and more. AMP is less useful for single-page apps that are heavy on dynamic or interactive features, such as route mapping, email or social networks.
- You don’t have to #AMPlify the whole site
Add AMP to a client’s existing site progressively by starting with simple, static content pages like articles, products, or blog posts. These are the “leaf” pages that users access through platforms and search results, and could be simple changes that also bring the benefits of AMP to the website. This approach allows you to keep the homepage and other “browser” pages that might require advanced, non-AMP dynamic functionality.
If you’re creating a new, content-heavy website from scratch, consider building the whole site with AMP from the start. To begin with, check out the getting started guidelines.
- The AMP Project is open source and still evolving
If a site’s use case is not supported in the AMP format yet, consider filing a feature request on GitHub, or you could even design a component yourself.
- AMP pages might need to meet additional requirements to show up in certain places
In order to appear in Google’s search results, AMP pages need only be valid AMP HTML. Some products integrating AMP might have further requirements than the AMP validation. For example, you’ll need to mark up your AMP pages as Article markup with Structured Data to make them eligible for the Google Top Stories section.
- There is no ranking change on Search
Whether a page or site has valid and eligible AMP pages has no bearing on the site’s ranking on the Search results page. The difference is that web results that have AMP versions will be labeled with an icon.
- AMP on Google is expanding globally
AMP search results on Google will be rolling out worldwide when it launches in the coming weeks. The Top Stories carousel which shows newsy and fresh AMP content is already available in a number of countries and languages.
- Help is on hand
There’s a whole host of useful resources that will help if you have any questions:
Webmasters Help Forum: Ask questions about AMP and Google’s implementation of AMP
Stack Overflow: Ask technical questions about AMP
GitHub: Submit a feature request or contribute
What are your top tips to #AMPlify pages? Let us know in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
Learn SEO for AMP Pages in 10 Minutes
In the interest of genuine curiosity, or some gentle motivation from cleverly placed Google Announcements, you might have decided that testing a basic AMP implementation is worth your time. If you’re not familiar with AMP, take a quick look at this post to help you decide whether you should implement AMP on your site. If […]
The post Learn SEO for AMP Pages in 10 Minutes appeared first on Builtvisible.
How to best evaluate issues with your Accelerated Mobile Pages
As you #AMPlify your site with Accelerated Mobile Pages, it’s important to keep an eye periodically on the validation status of your pages, as only valid AMP pages are eligible to show on Google Search.
When implementing AMP, sometimes pages will contain errors causing them to not be indexed by Google Search. Pages may also contain warnings that are elements that are not best practice or are going to become errors in the future.
Google Search Console is a free service that lets you check which of your AMP pages Google has identified as having errors. Once you know which URLs are running into issues, there are a few handy tools that can make checking the validation error details easier.
1. Browser Developer Tools
To use Developer Tools for validation:
- Open your AMP page in your browser
- Append “#development=1” to the URL, for example, http://localhost:8000/released.amp.html#development=1.
- Open the Chrome DevTools console and check for validation errors.
Developer Console errors will look similar to this:
2. AMP Browser Extensions
With the AMP Browser Extensions (available for Chrome and Opera), you can quickly identify and debug invalid AMP pages. As you browse your site, the extension will evaluate each AMP page visited and give an indication of the validity of the page.
|
|
When there are errors within an AMP page, the extension’s icon shows in a red color and displays the number of errors encountered. |
|
|
When there are no errors within an AMP page, the icon shows in a green color and displays the number of warnings, if any exist. |
|
|
When the page isn’t AMP but the page indicates that an AMP version is available, the icon shows in a blue color with a link icon, and clicking on the extension will redirect the browser to the AMP version. |
Using the extensions means you can see what errors or warnings the page has by clicking on the extension icon. Every issue will list the source line, source column, and a message indicating what is wrong. When a more detailed description of the issue exists, a “Learn more” link will take you to the relevant page on ampproject.org.
3. AMP Web Validator
The AMP Web Validator, available at validator.ampproject.org, provides a simple web UI to test the validity of your AMP pages.
To use the tool, you enter an AMP URL, or copy/paste your source code, and the web validator displays error messages between the lines. You can make edits directly in the web validator which will trigger revalidation, letting you know if your proposed tweaks will fix the problem.
What’s your favourite way to check the status of your AMP Pages? Share your feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
How to best evaluate issues with your Accelerated Mobile Pages
As you #AMPlify your site with Accelerated Mobile Pages, it’s important to keep an eye periodically on the validation status of your pages, as only valid AMP pages are eligible to show on Google Search.
When implementing AMP, sometimes pages will contain errors causing them to not be indexed by Google Search. Pages may also contain warnings that are elements that are not best practice or are going to become errors in the future.
Google Search Console is a free service that lets you check which of your AMP pages Google has identified as having errors. Once you know which URLs are running into issues, there are a few handy tools that can make checking the validation error details easier.
1. Browser Developer Tools
To use Developer Tools for validation:
- Open your AMP page in your browser
- Append “#development=1” to the URL, for example, http://localhost:8000/released.amp.html#development=1.
- Open the Chrome DevTools console and check for validation errors.
Developer Console errors will look similar to this:
2. AMP Browser Extensions
With the AMP Browser Extensions (available for Chrome and Opera), you can quickly identify and debug invalid AMP pages. As you browse your site, the extension will evaluate each AMP page visited and give an indication of the validity of the page.
|
|
When there are errors within an AMP page, the extension’s icon shows in a red color and displays the number of errors encountered. |
|
|
When there are no errors within an AMP page, the icon shows in a green color and displays the number of warnings, if any exist. |
|
|
When the page isn’t AMP but the page indicates that an AMP version is available, the icon shows in a blue color with a link icon, and clicking on the extension will redirect the browser to the AMP version. |
Using the extensions means you can see what errors or warnings the page has by clicking on the extension icon. Every issue will list the source line, source column, and a message indicating what is wrong. When a more detailed description of the issue exists, a “Learn more” link will take you to the relevant page on ampproject.org.
3. AMP Web Validator
The AMP Web Validator, available at validator.ampproject.org, provides a simple web UI to test the validity of your AMP pages.
To use the tool, you enter an AMP URL, or copy/paste your source code, and the web validator displays error messages between the lines. You can make edits directly in the web validator which will trigger revalidation, letting you know if your proposed tweaks will fix the problem.
What’s your favourite way to check the status of your AMP Pages? Share your feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tomo Taylor, AMP Community Manager
How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site?
If you have recently implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages on your site, it’s a great time to check which of your AMP pages Google has found and indexed by using Search Console.
Search Console is a free service that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search, including any Accelerated Mobile Pages. You don’t have to sign up for Search Console for your AMP pages to be included in Google Search results, but doing so can help you understand which of your AMP pages are eligible to show in search results.
To get started with Search Console, create a free account or sign in here and validate the ownership of your sites.
Once you have your site set up on Search Console, open the Accelerated Mobile Pages report under Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages to see which AMP pages Google has found and indexed on your site, as shown here:
The report lists AMP-related issues for AMP pages that are not indexed, so that you can identify and address them.
Search Console also lets you monitor the performance of your AMP pages on Google Search in the Search Analytics report. This report tells you which queries show your AMP pages in Search results, lets you compare how their metrics stack against your other results and see how the visibility of your AMP pages has changed over time.
To view your AMP page metrics, such as clicks or impressions, select Search Appearance > Search Analytics > Filter by AMP.
(Note: if you’ve only just created your Search Console account or set up your AMP pages and they have not been detected yet, remember that Google crawls pages only periodically. You can wait for the scheduled regular recrawl, or you can request a recrawl.)
Have you been using Search Console to monitor your AMP pages? Give us feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
UPDATE: To help ensure that your AMP implementation is working as expected, Search Console now has an enhanced AMP testing tool.
Posted by Tom Taylor, AMP Community Manager
How can Google Search Console help you AMPlify your site?
If you have recently implemented Accelerated Mobile Pages on your site, it’s a great time to check which of your AMP pages Google has found and indexed by using Search Console.
Search Console is a free service that helps you monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search, including any Accelerated Mobile Pages. You don’t have to sign up for Search Console for your AMP pages to be included in Google Search results, but doing so can help you understand which of your AMP pages are eligible to show in search results.
To get started with Search Console, create a free account or sign in here and validate the ownership of your sites.
Once you have your site set up on Search Console, open the Accelerated Mobile Pages report under Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages to see which AMP pages Google has found and indexed on your site, as shown here:
The report lists AMP-related issues for AMP pages that are not indexed, so that you can identify and address them.
Search Console also lets you monitor the performance of your AMP pages on Google Search in the Search Analytics report. This report tells you which queries show your AMP pages in Search results, lets you compare how their metrics stack against your other results and see how the visibility of your AMP pages has changed over time.
To view your AMP page metrics, such as clicks or impressions, select Search Appearance > Search Analytics > Filter by AMP.
(Note: if you’ve only just created your Search Console account or set up your AMP pages and they have not been detected yet, remember that Google crawls pages only periodically. You can wait for the scheduled regular recrawl, or you can request a recrawl.)
Have you been using Search Console to monitor your AMP pages? Give us feedback in the comments below or on our Google Webmasters Google+ page. Or as usual, if you have any questions or need help, feel free to post in our Webmasters Help Forum.
Posted by Tom Taylor, AMP Community Manager
Four pillars of SEO management: optimizing content for success
An estimated 51% of the traffic arriving on your website today originates from organic search.
Three technologies you absolutely must have for better SEO
Your website has to stay on trend to survive.
Five most interesting search marketing news stories of the week
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the worlds of search, search marketing, and beyond.
Google AMP update: who benefits the most?
Google continues to shake up mobile search in its goal to perfect user experience. Earlier this month, they announced that they will extend the reach of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to all mobile search engine results.
Should You Implement AMP Pages on Your Site?
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a language library for web pages (“AMP HTML” and “AMP JS”) intended to speed up the mobile rendering experience. Implementing makes the assumption that: a) your audience’s device is on a slow connection, and b) that your business could benefit from the faster load and render times offered by the […]
The post Should You Implement AMP Pages on Your Site? appeared first on Builtvisible.
As Google AMP appears in organic mobile results, some see lower CTRs
But for all of AMP’s virtues, websites that have adopted AMP may not be benefiting from the introduction of the site into organic listings.
How to implement Google AMP on your WordPress site as easily as possible
With the news that Google will be rolling out its accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to all organic listings beyond the ‘Top Stories’ you’ll be forgiven for getting a little bit panicky.
Five most interesting search marketing news stories of the week
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.