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Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

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Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#11

Post by waqf »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

As of now it's not a requirement, so I'm not sure how your hypothetical is relevant.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#13

Post by zaroth »

waqf wrote: post #11
cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

As of now it's not a requirement, so I'm not sure how your hypothetical is relevant.

It is a requirement for certain placement; such as the high ranking top-level news carousel.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#14

Post by woliveirajr »

End users, in generall, don't know and don't mind about these complaints against AMP.

What matters is if one gets the results he was searching for. And somehow those pages that have "amp" written nearby open faster, so let's click more on those.

Market pressure will drive decisions on whether it's better have amped pages (with those claimed drawbacks) or try to capture attention to the whole site with navigation and lighter pages.

And as a prisoner's dilemma, if sites that don't have amp are as fast as the amped, having "amp" near your link won't matter. If they are slower, the distinction will matter, independently of your specific optimization.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#15

Post by polemic »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

This matches my own experience using AMP via google search. As a _user_ the experience is excellent but it pushes me toward using content in a very shallow way. If I were a content _publisher_ I would be thinking very carefully about the cost this has on retention.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#16

Post by spullara »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

it exists for normal web pages and is actually named Chrome.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#17

Post by criddell »

dingo_bat wrote: post #2

So basically this guy says all of the issues are by design and you can choose not to use amp if you don't like all of it. Google isn't going to penalize non amp pages in search ranking. They are just going to not show your page in the carousel. I think it's a pretty fair position to take. If you don't like amp don't use it. We'll see if amp catches on over a period of time.

Amp isn't ideal, but neither is Instant Articles on Facebook.

I'm hoping that Amp is really just Google training publishers how to make web pages that aren't terrible for users.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#18

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

Does Google have any plans to let users opt out? Maybe an icon that takes you to the original? I tried opening the AMP link in a new tab and it took me to the site, so at least there's a workaround.

Since I normally use Firefox Mobile (has to try it with Chrome), I don't get the AMP icon and I'm taken to the requested site. I'm guessing this functionality is limited to Chrome and (maybe?) Safari on mobile.

AMP is attempting to solving a challenging problem, and although I don't personally agree with their solution, I've gotta recognize that opening the embedded AMP version of the page from the result of "git tips" was faster on Chrome than on Firefox. I'm hopeful that the lessons learned from this will be pushed upstream and help improve the web.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#19

Post by StephenConnell »

If hacker news had a speed rating next to the links I would probably click on them more instead of just reading the comments to decide if it's worth pulling up an article.

Note, It has been suggested that a speed rating on Google would be equivalent to the amp experience with less Google control.

Re: Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”

#20

Post by wmf »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #3

This is a good response and I appreciate Malte's effort to engage publishers, but it doesn't calm my nerves about the biggest publisher complaint about AMP: Google owns the chrome (top navigation) on all AMP pages. This makes it easy to navigate back to Google (why would you ever want to leave?) and other publishers in the AMP ecosystem, but much harder to navigate to the publisher that created the page in the first…

The extra chrome appears to be displayed in browsers but not in the Google app. On Android it's more natural to search from the app; I don't know what the situation is like on iOS.

I still don't understand why it's mandatory to use the Google CDN, but I probably don't want to know.

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