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Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

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Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#81

Post by mSparks »

throwawayReply wrote: post #80
mSparks wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm drawing a distinction between use/rely and how it was previously. Does anyone still have google search as their home page? And if they do, do they use it? When was the last time you got past the first page of results? (and btw, its so rare that that people do now did you know if you get past the first couple of pages it checks whether you are a bot). Im contrasting how it used to be (reading google results making…

You are wildly extrapolating from your own experience. I'll provide a counter anecdote. Google is my home page, I use it so often I don't think about using it. I can't think of one thing I've searched for this morning. But opening my history reveals half a dozen things I've searched for. Most of the time I "knew" my destination but google gets there quickest. And I'm not sure I ever remember spending a long time read…

I said "techies like me".

Thats not extrapolating anything.

Obviously much less experienced techies still need to look up how many sides a square has at least twice a day.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#82

Post by jasoncartwright »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #73
hannob wrote: post #70

AMP is essentially Google's answer to people creating terrible web experiences. It's been discussed and documented a lot. Common webpages today load content from dozens of different ad, tracking and whatever hosts, take several megabytes to load. All well known, but people don't stop doing it. Now Google comes along and says: You can't do it, let us do it. Which is perfectly reasonable from their point of view. And w…

What's stopping Google from promoting fast webpages without AMP? I have spent weeks improving load times for my websites, with A A A A A ratings op webpagetest.org as a result. AMP is just a fraction faster, why should I have to create a seperate AMP version? Also, my websites are essentially all dynamic content. People come for the comments, like on HN. I gues I'll have to use some cache-busting javascript if Google…

They do promote fast pages: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-i...

"we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings"

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#83

Post by rebelde »

hannob wrote: post #70

AMP is essentially Google's answer to people creating terrible web experiences. It's been discussed and documented a lot. Common webpages today load content from dozens of different ad, tracking and whatever hosts, take several megabytes to load. All well known, but people don't stop doing it. Now Google comes along and says: You can't do it, let us do it. Which is perfectly reasonable from their point of view. And w…

> If you don't like AMP nobody stops you from doing the same thing.

The AMP symbol tells users that the site loads quickly. Google doesn't indicate the same thing about non-AMP sites that still load quickly. Guess which site the user will tend to choose. I am not sure AMP will be optional for sites that want to get chosen.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#85

Post by g4k »

akerro wrote: post #35
lucaspiller wrote: post #8

The whole idea of AMP seems like it's really the wrong way to solve the problem. If you remove all the third party JavaScript, fonts, large images and "like" buttons you'll have effectively the same. I guess it already messes up ads and analytics (although I'd assume Google's services still work), so what's the problem? Kind of related: I recently switched my blog from Wordpress to Hugo. I found a minimal theme, but…

In the last 5 years there was NO WORDPRESS THEME OR PLUGIN that I didn't have to modify. I never saw any WP theme that comes with minified CSS/JS, handles sidebars correctly - sidebar created after post content, generated by PHP not JS, generates correct tags, even one "modern" theme had links in sidebar with "nofollow"... "SEO-friendly" plugins that make blog generation time 3-5 times longer than before, of course J…

Is your blogging platform available as a service or do you sell the themes? I was looking for simple and clean website templates just a few days ago, but couldn't find anything.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#86

Post by jasonkostempski »

walshemj wrote: post #79
hannob wrote: post #70

AMP is essentially Google's answer to people creating terrible web experiences. It's been discussed and documented a lot. Common webpages today load content from dozens of different ad, tracking and whatever hosts, take several megabytes to load. All well known, but people don't stop doing it. Now Google comes along and says: You can't do it, let us do it. Which is perfectly reasonable from their point of view. And w…

Every time I look at a website its shocking how no one even does basic image optimisation using PS on the images. This is such a trivial optimisation it makes you wonder about the level of competency of the average web development company.

Is there an alternative that doesn't require a monthly subscription?

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#87

Post by askmike »

pmlnr wrote: post #69
akerro wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 5 years there was NO WORDPRESS THEME OR PLUGIN that I didn't have to modify. I never saw any WP theme that comes with minified CSS/JS, handles sidebars correctly - sidebar created after post content, generated by PHP not JS, generates correct tags, even one "modern" theme had links in sidebar with "nofollow"... "SEO-friendly" plugins that make blog generation time 3-5 times longer than before, of course J…

Agreed on the WP part. At the same time, when you make a WP theme from scratch, with Twig and without all the crap, your WP becomes surprisingly fast. Hugo is a completely different thing, don't compare it to WP.

Why not compare Hugo to WP? That is what people do who want to create a new website.

They take a different angle, but the goal for both is to allow for easy maintainable websites.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#88

Post by AznHisoka »

rebelde wrote: post #83
hannob wrote: post #70

AMP is essentially Google's answer to people creating terrible web experiences. It's been discussed and documented a lot. Common webpages today load content from dozens of different ad, tracking and whatever hosts, take several megabytes to load. All well known, but people don't stop doing it. Now Google comes along and says: You can't do it, let us do it. Which is perfectly reasonable from their point of view. And w…

> If you don't like AMP nobody stops you from doing the same thing. The AMP symbol tells users that the site loads quickly. Google doesn't indicate the same thing about non-AMP sites that still load quickly. Guess which site the user will tend to choose. I am not sure AMP will be optional for sites that want to get chosen.

I'm pretty sure non tech users don't even know what AMP is for.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#89

Post by SlashmanX »

pmontra wrote: post #20

> Consider adding a link at the top of your AMP page, giving user an option to visit the original post Why should they want to read the post again? The only viable option is to have links to other posts on your site, or maybe a link to the comments. By the way, what's the purpose of the bar at the top? The back button of the browser already does that, even on mobile. About analytics: I don't know if those accesses do…

> By the way, what's the purpose of the bar at the top? The back button of the browser already does that, even on mobile.

It's to counteract the fact that in some browsers on mobile, it will just show "google.com" in the URL bar, the added bar shows the actual website. (Obviously this is a problem introduced by the whole caching thing but that's why it's there I guess)

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#90

Post by SlashmanX »

nailer wrote: post #71
laser wrote: post #36

Why would I want to give up 10% of my screen space to a useless bar that when I try to exit out instead takes me away from the page? Complete UX madness.

I've asked @amphtml why they're adding it: https://twitter.com/mikemaccana/status/787968936251981824

The URL bar shows "google.com" in a lot of mobile browsers (including the one in your screenshot), the bar shows the original website this content is from
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