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Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

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Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#251

Post by spiderfarmer »

jasoncartwright wrote: post #82
spiderfarmer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I really doubt that that factor has any real influence on ranking. In my niche there are notoriously slow websites at the top that aren't even responsive in some cases.

Just like the promised benefits of HTTPS. I have yet to hear about a case where search traffic increased after switching to HTTPS.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#252

Post by gondo »

Tepix wrote: post #99
gondo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can detect if your page is running inside iframe and if so, make the browser to load only your page, to get rid of services such as linkis.com

but does this work with AMP pages that restrict the javascript?

parent comment mentioned service such as http://linkis.com/ what i was reacting to. i doub't that you can use linkis.com with AMP

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#253

Post by mamadrood »

fixermark wrote: post #113
pcl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it's being served out of Google's servers changes the trust model for the content. End users have no good reason to trust Google with the cached data, but people assign trust to them when they click an AMP link. There's no real indication to an end user that that data is coming out of Google's caches rather than from the content provider. I find that misleading. Typically, cached web pages come out of e…

> End users have no good reason to trust Google with the cached data I'd imagine that end users who don't trust Google aren't using Google. > There's no real indication to an end user that that data is coming out of Google's caches rather than from the content provider. Users who care can see the URL and the domain for which the cert is signed. Most users do not care. > IMO this is very different than my company or I…

> I'd imagine that end users who don't trust Google aren't using Google.

Except Google use to just guide your to the content, you just had to trust them to give you the best possible answer. Now you have to trust they have the real one too.

> Users who care can see the URL and the domain for which the cert is signed. Most users do not care.

Most users do not care if their passwords are stored in plain text, or if a bridge they cross has been built by a proper engineer. Consumer ignorance is not a valid reason for shady practices.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#254

Post by lucideer »

hannob wrote: post #200
lmm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to though. If there's a symbol and sites with that symbol are faster, they'll learn to look for the symbol, perhaps not even consciously.

But obviously this is only the case if they are faster. If people start saying "we don't like this AMP thing, we'll make our pages fast on our own" then it won't be a symbol associated with things being faster, it will just be "some irrelevant google thing". But if people notice that everytime they click on one of those amp things it loads fast and all other stuff loads slow they'll of course remember that.

This is fallacious as you're not differentiating between "my site" and "all sites".

What you're suggesting is not a matter of me making my website faster than AMP in isolation. You're talking about every non-AMP site in the world banding together and collectively bringing up the average speed of an internet webpage to be faster than an AMP page.

Without that, there's nothing to make my one faster-than-AMP site stand out from the rest of the slow non-AMP web in Google search results.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#255

Post by brainfire »

The web is not your personal money generator. It's a place I go for information. I'm sorry that your fellow developers have made it such a user-hostile place that projects like AMP that defend the user experience make it harder for you to make money. But maybe if you're only interested in publishing for the money, I'm not particularly interested in courting your continued participation.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#256

Post by mSparks »

vertis wrote: post #50
mSparks wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually realised last week I hardly use google search anymore. And cant remember the last time i saw - let alone clicked on an ad (clickbait excluded). Not that I've switched to another search provider as much as search isn't the entry point to the internet it once was (especially with no google on tor sites). That techies like me dont rely on them any more and non techies all share stuff via facebook must be hurtin…

What do you use instead when searching for something?

eBooks. The manual/documentation. Asking someone else working on a similar problem (who will then usually send over an ebook or other documentation I didn't have).

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#258

Post by spiderfarmer »

ryanobjc wrote: post #210
spiderfarmer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The AMP Cache is an option that you can opt in to. The wordpress plugin by default opts in. The author said as much. The problem isn't that Google "steals" traffic in the sense it's going against the wishes of the site publisher, but that the author didn't know what he was buying in to and thus was surprised. There is the other thing which is the AMP Cache is probably more local and faster than your site. Small sites…

> Small sites usually dont use CDNs so there it is.

I think it's easier to use a CDN like CDN77 than to convert the average site to AMP.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#259

Post by spiderfarmer »

gergles wrote: post #231
ryanobjc wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AMP Cache is an option that you can opt in to. The wordpress plugin by default opts in. The author said as much. The problem isn't that Google "steals" traffic in the sense it's going against the wishes of the site publisher, but that the author didn't know what he was buying in to and thus was surprised. There is the other thing which is the AMP Cache is probably more local and faster than your site. Small sites…

No, it is not optional. If you publish a valid AMP page and Google finds out about it, it will be cached. https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq > Can I stop content from being cached? > No. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. For example, Google products use the Google AMP Cache to serve AMP content as fast as possible.

So cache-busting Javascript will be needed, which will kind of defeat the purpose.

Re: Google May Be Stealing Mobile Traffic

#260

Post by Ph0X »

fixermark wrote: post #103
Ph0X wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why would you ever want as a user to go from an AMP article to the same article but non-AMP? I could see the user going to the homepage of that site to see more similar articles (or clicking on other articles on the side), but I don't see reason why they would want to see the exact same content but slowly loaded.

And again, definitely not by pressing X. Pressing X means you're done with the article. And if you're interested, you'd press the websites logo at the top to go home, not X.

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