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Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

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Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#131

Post by x1798DE »

pk22 wrote: post #119
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…

Would you rather have an internet where every website has a design like an article from Wikipedia? Google is probably in their right to highlight pages using AMP (it's their search engine) but probably unfair.

It would be amazing if every website were designed like Wikipedia. With the exception of MediaViewer, Wikipedia is one of the best-designed websites out there. It's light, content-prominent, progressively enhanced, HTTPS-only. Even their mobile site is pretty good (though basically all mobile experiences are bad nowadays). What exactly is wrong with Wikipedia's design?

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#132

Post by romanovcode »

fixermark wrote: post #127
freehunter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's actively making the Internet worse for the current users. Is it worth destroying the current user base in order to attract a new one?

How is it making the Internet worse for current users?

Well do you really like the idea that when you go to some search result it effectively is opening an iframe to the website you're trying to go?

Or as a web developer you need to make sure to adopt to their stupid standards like renaming your img to amp-img and making sure it works in amp and non-amp so you'd be doing both?

I see it as complete bollocks.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#133

Post by criddell »

lmm wrote: post #95
criddell wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php You can insert ImageMagick somewhere into your production pipeline. It's excellent software.

Well other than being riddled with security holes. It has its place, but never use it on user-submitted images.

Well, the person I'm responding to is using Photoshop to resize images. Presumably that isn't for user submitted content.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#134

Post by piyush_soni »

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…

In my opinion, the problem is that your version of unbiased doesn't add much value to a user (and is actually biased for the website-owners). For example, SourceForge started adding a lot of misleading 'Download' buttons all over their page, and they might ask the same thing about 'an unbiased ranking' (Google's always been criticized for being the 'Web Police'). As a user however, I'd want Sourceforge's rankings go down the drain because it uses (directly or through its advertisers, doesn't matter) such a bad practice of getting users to click on the ads. AMP is similar. They're giving better ranking to pages which add value to the user, and are probably less concerned about the webmaster. In countries with slow internet, AMP adds a lot of value. You click, and the page is there (no waiting icons and 'downloading' for a few seconds)

(Edit: Sure, Sourceforge was improved a lot after the new owners, it was just used as an example)

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#135

Post by buro9 »

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 don't (and never will) use AMP

You may intend this to mean that you will never consciously publish your content in AMP, but there is a good chance that you will consume content that is published in AMP.

It is already something I find myself noticing, especially on mobile. If you see an article work on mobile from a news site and it was fast, it was probably AMP.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#136

Post by NoGravitas »

x1798DE wrote: post #131
pk22 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather have an internet where every website has a design like an article from Wikipedia? Google is probably in their right to highlight pages using AMP (it's their search engine) but probably unfair.

It would be amazing if every website were designed like Wikipedia. With the exception of MediaViewer, Wikipedia is one of the best-designed websites out there. It's light, content-prominent, progressively enhanced, HTTPS-only. Even their mobile site is pretty good (though basically all mobile experiences are bad nowadays). What exactly is wrong with Wikipedia's design?

Wikipedia's mobile site is fantastic, IMO. I really wish all mobile sites were like Wikipedia's. The pain of browsing the web on mobile would go away completely.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#138

Post by AJ007 »

"I hope I am not being too hard on Google." -- no, the author is being very, very nice. Google has a strong business interest in users never going to other sites. Between AMP & voice search, the future is going to be very rough for businesses that rely on free search traffic.

In practical business terms I would strongly suggest website owners build ultra-light versions of their sites. If you have international aspirations your site should work on Opera Mini. If you have a big audience it is very reasonable and worth it to have desktop/tablet, smartphone, and ultra-lite versions of your site.

Reposting part of a comment I made a month back on AMP:

#1 There is a big problem with mobile sites. I'm using a recent iPhone and many popular news sites, without ad blockers, are as close to unusable as the worst websites I've ever been to, dating back to using Internet Explorer in 1999. Auto playing inline video ads that slide in to view, just insane. These things clearly kill time on site and reader retention. I have theories about why publishers are ignoring this, but who knows.

#2 Google is using AMP to co-opt publisher's traffic. This means users are scrolling to another story from another publisher or easily bouncing back to the Google results when they land on your content. (See the X in the story link on the animated gif example.) There goes your time on site and long term user retention. If #1 was a problem for you already, you probably don't notice.

#3 AMP & Instant articles are going to put a stranglehold on third party ad networks and represent a very real anti-trust issue. There are a bunch of other privacy implications too, which have been discussed in length. Publishers should be thinking really hard about their future.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#139

Post by pk22 »

x1798DE wrote: post #131
pk22 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather have an internet where every website has a design like an article from Wikipedia? Google is probably in their right to highlight pages using AMP (it's their search engine) but probably unfair.

It would be amazing if every website were designed like Wikipedia. With the exception of MediaViewer, Wikipedia is one of the best-designed websites out there. It's light, content-prominent, progressively enhanced, HTTPS-only. Even their mobile site is pretty good (though basically all mobile experiences are bad nowadays). What exactly is wrong with Wikipedia's design?

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I like to enjoy design, the placement of the content, the choice of fonts and custom article designs for featured contents, etc. My point is that efforts should be focused on optimizing the speed but still maintaining the richness and individuality of the Web.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#140

Post by cauterized »

marmshallow wrote: post #40
dingo_bat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's your experience. In my experience, AMP pages are horrible and I avoid clicking on those.

Why don't you like them as a user? They load extremely quickly and you can scroll through the different AMP pages by simply swiping left or right.

For me, at least, it's being unable to load it in a background tab or copy the actual URL from the URL bar. It breaks the web.

Plus who needs to lose even more screen space to that stupid bar at the top plus the fact that the browser chrome doesn't hide itself when you scroll like it does on a normal page?

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