Search giant
Google has announced the launch of AMP. The company, which has headquarters in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, United States, is the leading website search engine and an online advertising powerhouse. The introduction of AMP is to facilitate faster loading web pages on mobile devices.
“Access to information is at the heart of Google’s mission,” suggested the company’s blog. “Unfortunately, today, the mobile web isn't living up to the expectations people have for getting the information they need, particularly when it comes to speed. In fact, data shows that people abandon websites after just three seconds if the content doesn't load quickly—which is bad not just for people trying to get what they want online, but for the publishers who want those readers to enjoy the content they've created for them. That's why, last October, we joined others across the industry on the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP for short), an open source initiative to make the mobile web as fast as possible”.
AMP allows users to create web pages that will show static content. The solution has three different elements: AMP HTML, AMP JS and Google AMP Cache. AMP HTML is a limited form of HTML that enhances performance. The majority of AMP HTML page tags are the same as HTML tags, but some – known as AMP HTML components – have been superseded by tags that are specific to AMP. AMP JS allows AMP HTML pages to render quickly and Google AMP Cache makes AMP HTML pages available to users. AMP also makes external resources asynchronous so pages can render without impediment. In addition, iframes are “sandboxed” with element layouts loaded without requiring CSS selectors.
AMP-enabled pages are already appearing in search results (particularly websites related to news services) and are indicated by a green AMP logo and a circle icon. AMP pages currently available seem to load in fractions of a second. In addition, websites utilizing the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) are now AMP optimized.
Do you have any experience of AMP pages? Let us know your thoughts. Add your comments below.
