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Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#141

Post by callahad »

WorkLobster wrote: post #121
callahad wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building fast webpages won't get you preferential placement in Google search results.

Unless I'm missing something, it does: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-i...

You're right, I was imprecise in my brevity. Speed is definitely a signal in ranking. I'm mainly grousing at classes of results -- like the "Top Stories" carousel -- that are only available to AMP pages, and rather difficult to organically rank above. The AMP results also get more vertical real estate, flashy thumbnails, publisher logo images, etc.

For example, searching for "Python" returns five pages of results where only two aren't about the programming language. But at the top of the page, bested only by python.org itself, is a huge carousel of 11 AMP stories about snakes in the everglades. These stories also appear in the normal search results, but not until the bottom of page 7.

So somehow the #68 result, "Python hunters eliminate more than 100 snakes from Everglades," got boosted to #2, because rankings #2 through #13 (if you count the AMP carousel) are not available to merely fast and relevant content.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#142

Post by simplehuman »

pmattos wrote: post #50
teddyh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, you can only do that by registering yourself to Apple, and paying them $100 for the privilege.

Not anymore. You can deploy to your own device for free (with an Apple ID): https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/ (scroll to the bottom).

The app will run only for 7 days

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#143

Post by tedmiston »

MBCook wrote: post #124
dyarosla wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit, I've been on iOS for years and only ever use Safari for browsing, and NEVER had I heard about this tap the top bar to scroll to the top behavior.

It's one of the standard iOS gestures and works nearly everywhere. iOS is FULL of handy little things like that, but I'm not sure many of them are ever explained . You just have to stumble across it or read about it somewhere like reviews of the new versions of iOS. Did you know in mail (and many other places) you can swipe table rows left or right for quick actions? Marco Arment recently changed Overcast to make fea…

Another nice gesture that's lesser known is hold down on the left side of the screen in any app then drag to the right to open the app switcher.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#144

Post by jwilcoxson »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #122
jwilcoxson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get your point, your rebuttal is a pretty hardcore ad hominem.

It's not a rebuttal - he's not trying to say Scott is wrong. He's pointing out Scott is a hypocrite. An insult is not an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.

He is arguing against Johns stance on AMP by calling him a hypocrite citing his views on iOS, literally a perfect example of an ad hominem.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#145

Post by jwilcoxson »

eps wrote: post #57
jwilcoxson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Duck Duck Go, still not Google-level results, but it's still pretty good, and not Bing.

It is actually Bing, which DDG uses for the bulk of its results.

Well, I learned something today.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#146

Post by scott_karana »

ehsankia wrote: post #77
Antrikshy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize AMP content was hosted by Google.

The original content is still on the website, Google hosts a cache server, rehosting the website's content around the world closer to the users for faster access, for free. In theory, it's a win-win-win situation. Publisher gets free hosting (with analytics and ad money still coming to them obviously), users get a faster experience and Google is happier if the users browser more content. In reality, AMP is obviously…

Google has, and should, downranked slow pages in favour of fast ones.

But instead of simply pushing that aspect harder, they're actively promoting their own tech.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#147

Post by raarts »

cbsmith wrote: post #135
coldtea wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "publication independence"? Really? The man who is famous among other things for supporting the most closed ecosystem there is around: iOS, where a single company decides what apps are worth publishing and wish ones doesn't. First of all, that's an ad hominem. If publication independence is important, then it remains important whether Gruber is hypocritical about it or not. Second, one might want apps to be curated…

Pointing out a seeming contradiction in an advocate's advocacy is not an ad hominem.

But rebutting an argument by attacking the character of the person making it, is.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#148

Post by jwilcoxson »

vamsipk wrote: post #84
jwilcoxson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Duck Duck Go, still not Google-level results, but it's still pretty good, and not Bing.

And specifically why not Bing?

Bing just feels gross to me, just like Google. But as someone pointed out, I guess DDG uses Bing for some of its results, so I don't have much of an argument here.

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#149

Post by CaptSpify »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #109
MBCook wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP does NOT outperform HTML5 unless the HTML5 page is horribly designed and ridiculously bloated. But that can be fixed without Google's help. I'm not sure why your dismissive of the scrolling thing. Having something breaks the feel of the web browser is a really bad idea. Additionally he's completely right that it breaks other platform conventions that users expect to use. You can't use the share button, you can't…

"Horribly designed and ridiculously bloated" describes the majority of popular websites. If companies won't fix their shit, somebody else will come along and do it for them.

Or Google do things the right way, ad could start punishing them instead. Google pushes those to the top of results, and then sweeps in to fix the "problem" that they created

Re: Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

#150

Post by belorn »

MBCook wrote: post #82
danso wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that's all Google truly cared about they could've simply put a heavy penalty on Pages that rendered slow or presented garbage. There already is a penalty for slow-loading pages, but you make a good point that the penalty could be increased to the point where publishers would be forced to adapt accordingly. However, outside of the news ecosystem, that would end up penalizing a much larger base of content creators…

I understand. But I don't know what else I'd want google to do other than turning up the penalty a lot. If there are pages that have to load slow for some reason then hopefully they're good enough to overcome that penalty. Or maybe they could choose to apply it only to news sites? The problem is that Google took this in such and embrace-and-extend direction that seems to benefit them and give them a lot more power th…

If you increase the penalty you also increase the artifacts from measuring the speed. Should it measure first byte, content above the screen size (and which size then), or fully loaded site. What about lazy load which neither method represent when a site is usable, but rather at what point javascript takes over the responsibility to load the site.

A small penalty devalues gaming the way google measure the speed.

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