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Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

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Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#21

Post by PaulHoule »

tyingq wrote: post #19
asdfologist wrote: post #15

As a user I like AMP because it's guaranteed to be very fast. There, I said it.

Well sure, Google isn't dumb. Adding in enough benefits (speed, carousel placement) to your Trojan horse ensures there are plausible reasons to bring it into the fort. Publishers certainly wouldn't give up the most important bits of their page (the top), and cede left/right swipe hijacking (on carousel loaded pages) if there weren't some perceived benefit.

"Perceived" benefit is the key.

It used to be the "World Wide Web" but now it is the "Google Platform" and we just live in it. After Google established that useful web search was possible the realized that the #1 competitor for their ads was organic rankings, and if you could really get a #1 ranking by investing in the best content then why would you spend money on ads?

So since then it is has been about deliberately degrading the search results so you learn to look at the ads instead, giving people bad S.E.O. advice, etc.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#23

Post by mort96 »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #14
mercer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little knowledge is needed to know how to speed up a website (or keep it from becoming slow). Almost every front-ender I've met, including those who never got beyond inserting jQuery snippets, knows enough.

Speeding a site up is one thing. Speeding it up substantially is another and I doubt your example of one who only knows how to insert jQuery snippets knows enough to both understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser.

You don't need to know enough to understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser, you just need to know enough to remove the tags related to ad networks and tracking to see huge load time and ux improvements.

It's not really the web developers who are the issue; they just implement what the people above them in the org chart wants. You could argue that the web developers should push back on it more than they do, but I don't buy that they're not knowledgeable enough to fix it.

That's not to say that there aren't actual technical issues; the recent trend of throwing front-end frameworks on content-heavy pages, making the users' low-powered phones parse and run hundreds of megabytes of JS before the page can be interacted with, is an example.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#24

Post by madeofpalk »

zzleeper wrote: post #7
Filligree wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wonderful when browsing. Pages load in less than half a minute, unlike nearly the entire rest of the internet. Hacker News doesn't need it, but they're nearly unique in having written a good website.

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it, but of course they don't.

> I can't navigate away from it easily

eh? You can't hit 'back'?

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#25

Post by frandroid »

tyingq wrote: post #16
setquk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. I can’t understand why the hell anyone would want to use it anyway. The experience is terrible.

Publishers use it because otherwise their stories don't end up in the carousel widget for Google searches. I don't think many of them are actually buying into the AMP hype. They are just backed into a corner.

I can confirm this. Source: working at my country's largest newspaper.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#26

Post by tyingq »

madeofpalk wrote: post #24
zzleeper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it, but of course they don't.

> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?

It does hijack the back button for carousel loaded pages in a way that's odd.

Search for some newsworthy word, say "trump". Click a carousel story. Swipe right (another hijack), and the page loads a story from a competitor to the publisher of the original loaded AMP page.

Now, hit the back button. One assumes it would go to the original loaded story, right? Nope, it goes back to Google. Surely that wasn't intentional, right?

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#27

Post by izacus »

PaulHoule wrote: post #21
tyingq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, Google isn't dumb. Adding in enough benefits (speed, carousel placement) to your Trojan horse ensures there are plausible reasons to bring it into the fort. Publishers certainly wouldn't give up the most important bits of their page (the top), and cede left/right swipe hijacking (on carousel loaded pages) if there weren't some perceived benefit.

"Perceived" benefit is the key. It used to be the "World Wide Web" but now it is the "Google Platform" and we just live in it. After Google established that useful web search was possible the realized that the #1 competitor for their ads was organic rankings, and if you could really get a #1 ranking by investing in the best content then why would you spend money on ads? So since then it is has been about deliberately…

Your conspirancy theory completely ignores the whole shitshow of 15MB+ textual websites we've had to endure in those last years.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#28

Post by ryanwaggoner »

madeofpalk wrote: post #24
zzleeper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I abhor it on mobile. I can't navigate away from it easily, it's hard to copy paste annurl to share with others, etc. I wish Chrome had the option to disable it, but of course they don't.

> I can't navigate away from it easily eh? You can't hit 'back'?

It constantly breaks the back button and screws up my history.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#29

Post by izacus »

mercer wrote: post #9
xiphias2 wrote: post #5

Front end engineers are not selected for their skills in understanding algorithms and data structures. It's quite easy to speed up a web site if you understand how CPU works on a low level and how Javascript is compiled to machine code, but it requires a lot of knowledge.

Very little knowledge is needed to know how to speed up a website (or keep it from becoming slow). Almost every front-ender I've met, including those who never got beyond inserting jQuery snippets, knows enough.

> Very little knowledge is needed to know how to speed up a website (or keep it from becoming slow). Almost every front-ender I've met, including those who never got beyond inserting jQuery snippets, knows enough.

And yet somehow they decided to not use that knowledge until Google pushed them into corner.

Re: Google AMP case study: leads dropped by 59%

#30

Post by tyingq »

izacus wrote: post #27
PaulHoule wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Perceived" benefit is the key. It used to be the "World Wide Web" but now it is the "Google Platform" and we just live in it. After Google established that useful web search was possible the realized that the #1 competitor for their ads was organic rankings, and if you could really get a #1 ranking by investing in the best content then why would you spend money on ads? So since then it is has been about deliberately…

Your conspirancy theory completely ignores the whole shitshow of 15MB+ textual websites we've had to endure in those last years.

"Conspiracy theory" is an interesting take. Are you suggesting Google's motives here are purely altruistic...solely to improve the web?
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