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Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

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Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#101

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

coderjames wrote: post #97
jacquesm wrote: post #93

I don't (and never will) use AMP and I feel that it is patently unfair to penalize pages for not using some non-standard tech. Google should index the web fairly, not make use of their tech a factor. Webpage speed is a fair measure (and I really wouldn't know what I could do to make my pages any faster, AMP will not make a measurable difference). I would expect an un-biased search engine to rate pages with and withou…

> I would expect an un-biased search engine to rate pages with and without AMP equal Well there's your problem :-). Google isn't an unbiased search engine, they're a commercial entity with a financial interest in feeding you particular search results. They're absolutely going to be biased in the results they provide you.

They also have near-monopoly status on search, so they must not be anticompetitive.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#103

Post by fixermark »

Ph0X wrote: post #28
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I heard about AMP, I didn't get warm fuzzies. I didn't exactly know how or why, but something told me that the main benefactor with this technology was Google, not the user, and certainly not the content provider. I can make pages faster without AMP by stripping the needless bloat and using a proper CDN. Why do I need this tech again, besides the artificial goad of page rank?

If you're willing to put in all the work to do it yourself, and also pay for CDN (though it probably won't be as good as Google's), then feel free to do it. But yeah, nothing's free. They give you this great technology, free access to their world-wide CDN, and better organic search results, at the cost of having the X button going back to search. Though I have no idea how the author things that the "X" button should…

It's pretty straightforward to provide a link in the page content that goes to the non-AMP version of the page. Multiple other news sites already do this.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#104

Post by walshemj »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #86
walshemj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is jpegtran and other cli based tools - but PS does tend to perform better.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#105

Post by fixermark »

mSparks wrote: post #81
throwawayReply wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I said "techies like me"

A data point of one isn't particularly descriptive.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#106

Post by fixermark »

agumonkey wrote: post #78
Animats wrote: post #11

It's not your site any more. You're just a free content provider to Google now.

It's odd, I feel like we're going into a Google vs Facebook webs. Each trying to control its part of the virtual world. I'm really really curious about how it would be if we had "free" mesh networks under ipfs like content. It wouldn't need to be high capacity, just text, mail, json; enough to communicate.

If we had that, someone would come along with a flashier technology, content providers who could afford to try that technology would, consumers who want more would use that technology, and the web would evolve much along the same lines as it has.

Citation: The "web" used to be just text and s; we were already there.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#107

Post by driverdan »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #86
walshemj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

ImageOptim is better than PS: https://imageoptim.com

You still need to resize your images appropriately but ImageOptim will do the rest. It passes images through a series of image optimization libs.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#108

Post by fixermark »

romanovcode wrote: post #55

I think that this whole AMP thing is horrible for the web. It's like Google is not dictating how one should build/style their websites. Thanks, but no thanks. Stay evil, Google.

Google has an eye on the next billion web users---the ones who aren't on the network yet because of cost and bandwidth. Their experience will be significantly bandwidth-constrained in the short run, and AMP is one of the initiatives to provide a segment of the web that works in such an ecosystem.

If the web were going in a direction to serve that demographic organically, AMP wouldn't be necessary.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#109

Post by fixermark »

pcl wrote: post #6
visarga wrote: post #3

Well, considering that said traffic originated from Google, and that Google was under no obligation to send it to OP's page, it's a little more nuanced than "stealing". It just means they sent different behaving traffic than usual - traffic that only touches one article and returns to Google. It might discourage webmasters from adopting AMP though, if they have the expectation to lead the visitor to the homepage or o…

I really love the speed of AMP pages, but I don't like the fact that the server request is proxied through Google. This is akin to an ISP injecting their own little optimization toolbar into pages rendered to the user, except that cert pinning isn't even an option here, since Google is doing the content re-writing at the app tier. They even manage to keep the browser security icon green, creating the at-a-glance perc…

> If Google edge caching really is critical, then I'd rather see an architecture in which the AMP content is signed by the originating site, and the signature is looked up and validated client-side.

AMP's purpose is to deliver content at minimal bandwidth and latency. Requiring the client to side-channel to the originating server (that can be God-knows-where relative to the requesting client) defeats the purpose of creating a system for low-bandwidth users to quickly fetch and display content on mobile devices.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#110

Post by fixermark »

butner wrote: post #5
visarga wrote: post #3

Well, considering that said traffic originated from Google, and that Google was under no obligation to send it to OP's page, it's a little more nuanced than "stealing". It just means they sent different behaving traffic than usual - traffic that only touches one article and returns to Google. It might discourage webmasters from adopting AMP though, if they have the expectation to lead the visitor to the homepage or o…

But the user is expecting to go to the site. Agree w/ OP's concern.

The user is expecting to see the content of the site, not "go to" the site.

Most users do not actually care what the URL bar says. We know this because of the number of people who get to Facebook by searching for "Facebook".

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