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Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

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Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#151

Post by NoGravitas »

x1798DE wrote: post #150
NoGravitas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's mostly OK. A lot of my problems with mobile would be alleviated if I could get a browser to reflow text on demand. It used to be you could set your zoom level, double tap and the page would reflow to the new zoom level. This doesn't seem possible now, so I'm always scrolling side to side if I want to be zoomed in a bit more. I have a few other minor problems about how Wikipedia's mobile page handles with…

Mobile Firefox does this fine. JumpGo does it, too, which means that it's certainly still possible in Android System WebView.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#152

Post by wtbob »

I still can't get over the fact that AMP breaks the img tag and requires JavaScript.

My long-running browsers instances are bogged down by JavaScript (and I have NoScript on whitelist mode, with it only allowed where necessary!). Requiring it on any fast-page standard seems counterproductive.

And why, why would they break the img tag‽

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#154

Post by jacquesm »

8ytecoder wrote: post #146
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…

Does anyone know how to disable AMP?

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/8o...

You can't. That's probably not an oversight.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#155

Post by bandrami »

fixermark wrote: post #108
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.

That's an interesting point, especially since Facebook's strategy for those same billion users is to bring bandwidth (which happens to be preferentially dedicated to Facebook properties) to them.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#156

Post by JustSomeNobody »

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…

Diet pill mentality. People don't want to put in an effort to lose 25 lbs, they'd rather take a pill. Same here. People don't want to put in the effort to make something better, they want Google to do it.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#157

Post by akerro »

g4k wrote: post #85
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…

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.

Writing my own blogging engine that will work for my needs. Not themes. Not related to anything existing.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#158

Post by JustSomeNobody »

AznHisoka wrote: post #88
rebelde wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They'll know soon enough that the AMP sites load faster. Even if they don't know what the AMP actually means. Likely they'll think AMP is this big, huge site that just has faster content.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#159

Post by eric_h »

buro9 wrote: post #135
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.

Yeah, you can't really argue that AMP isn't a good product, from a technical perspective. AMP sites load instantly for me.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#160

Post by state_less »

tboyd47 wrote: post #144
AJ007 wrote: post #138

"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 aspira…

How do you suggest publishers who are dependent on traffic from Google cope with AMP in the short-term? It seems like there is no way to compete with AMP-enabled content on Google ranking except by adopting AMP.

Therein lies the problem, Google owns 80% of the market. Google is a de-facto monopoly. They can force you to act against your long term interests for a short term gain.

I personally find the gain suspicious, it's already possible to make fast pages.

Soon, we'll all merely be Google content providers.

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