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Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

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Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#151

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

ehnto wrote: post #23
piecu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for google. They want to kill links.

What do they intend to replace them with?

Pretty sure it would still be links behind the scenes. The argument is only for user-facing links to „get simpler“ on the basis of links with tokens and whatnot being to complex and easy to get phished with. Don‘t forget, in Googles vision everyday users won‘t interact with keyboard/mouse or similar in the not too distant future. It‘s all Assistant and device-agnostic ambient computing.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#152

Post by vbsteven »

So many people in this thread complain about AMP being forced on them as an end user. Nobody forces you to use Google...

Just use another search engine like DuckDuckGo. It is sufficient for over 90% of my searches and I haven’t seen an amp page in ages.

AMP for SEO is another discussion, in that case it is kind of forced on you if you want to rank high on the Googlenet.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#153

Post by benatkin »

xupybd wrote: post #37

Just came to say I hate amp. If I want to go to a site I want that site not a google cache of it. It’s not a better experience. It just means another click to get to where I was going. Stop the madness Google kill amp.

"I want that site not a google cache of it" might be true for you, but for me, I don't want the site so much as the article or product listing, and for most users, they don't know that it's a google cache of it.

I think AMP provides the tools for a good UX but many sites don't provide it because they want the user to go to their site, because they mistakenly don't think they can get enough ad revenue or CTAs to get the user to sign up for mailing lists or add a product to a shopping cart on the AMP page. These are supported. So they only show an excerpt of the article on the AMP page and you have to go to the site in order to get it.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#154

Post by mattmanser »

GavinMcG wrote: post #125
rendall wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this confusing? What's not clear to you?

The "power in another industry" part. What part of that wasn't clear to you ? Which market is Google unfairly benefiting/profiting in, by leveraging its market share in search?

Browsers, mobile operating systems, ad networks, comparison sites, video hosting sites, image search, map services, etc., etc., etc.

All of Google myriad of properties benefit from being able to limit competitors web page size, limit their technology use, restrict advertising and gating them behind your own servers.

Plus on top, Google doesn't have to do any of that shit themselves and can gleefully put themselves at the top of every search (and are doing with an ever expanding array of search terms).

As well as increasing the cost of developing a site to compete with any of Google's myriad properties, by having to support HTML and Google's proprietary AMP, that they're pretending is an open standard but is completely under their control.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#155

Post by epanchin »

hknd wrote: post #132
benjymo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Google can rank by whatever criteria they want and we are forced to implement it. And it isn't always in the best interest of the end user. E.g. at a company we had to add "useless" content on our shop pages, otherwise google ranked the pages lower due to having not enough content.

The Google Search team is always ranking pages to get the best metric (ctr, time-spend-on-website), s.t. it indicates that users are happy with the result. If any feature/change introduces a regression, they will not ship it. (That kinda indicates that people outside of hn actually like amp) Keep in mind that: amp team != search team.

Time spent on website?

Is that why answers are always buried in long articles or walls of text?

Seems a horrible metric.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#156

Post by la_barba »

hknd wrote: post #132
benjymo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Google can rank by whatever criteria they want and we are forced to implement it. And it isn't always in the best interest of the end user. E.g. at a company we had to add "useless" content on our shop pages, otherwise google ranked the pages lower due to having not enough content.

The Google Search team is always ranking pages to get the best metric (ctr, time-spend-on-website), s.t. it indicates that users are happy with the result. If any feature/change introduces a regression, they will not ship it. (That kinda indicates that people outside of hn actually like amp) Keep in mind that: amp team != search team.

Well, users would be happier with websites that showed fewer ads and had fewer tracking JS scripts slowing down the website. Will Google ever rank by that metric? Google is slowly but surely becoming an ad-infested link-farm kinda website, one they used to ban in their search results not too long ago.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#157

Post by CDSlice »

First of all, I'm not a web developer, so I may not get all the problems with AMP.

I actually love AMP on mobile. Every site I've used(1) that has an AMP version loads faster and works better even with some ads than the normal version on Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin. Given that it's possible for people to host their own AMP cache (like Cloudflare does), I really don't see the problem with AMP itself.

(1) Other then Reddit, but considering how much of a dumpster fire their normal mobile site is I honestly think that it's broken on purpose to try and make people use the app.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#158

Post by LoSboccacc »

apexalpha wrote: post #118
bluetidepro wrote: post #90

It's ironic to me that AMP is a problem we all brought upon ourselves, really. It's almost (jokingly) a Prisoner's dilemma [1]. Had no one ever opted into it, it probably would have just been swept under the rug by Google, and a win-win for us all. But since a competitor of yours ( probably ) opted into it to get ahead of you, you now have to opt into it also, to compete and get the same SEO "power juice" it gave the…

Counterpoint: WE don't live in an ideal world and AMP is my only option of getting de-bloated webpages. I would love if managers and directors would do this themselves and AMP wouldn't be needed, but that's just not the case. I have to choose between downloading some text and images to read an article or load 5MB JavaScript SinglePageApp with tracking, ads, auto playing video's... I know in an ideal world AMP would b…

you can still put your wallet to vote and support outlets that provide a RSS feed, like a proper one with full articles and images

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#159

Post by michaelmior »

graeme wrote: post #95
michaelmior wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think a larger group will find AMP annoying? I know I'm in the minority, but I generally like AMP in my search results.

If it breaks things. For example, I had a common issue where reddit links in search didn't have comments and I had to click through to get to them If the amp page displays what you expect, it works well. It it makes you click through, it doesn't. Of course, users may or may not realize amp/google are the reason a site is broke. Dunno how many people have issues like this though. Reddit was the main one for me, plus a…

"broken" and "requiring an extra click" seem like two different things to me. Although I understand that you're not getting what you expected, so my judgement here is subjective.

Re: Google AMP Issue: Links to visit the site currently not working

#160

Post by ckuhl »

vbsteven wrote: post #152

So many people in this thread complain about AMP being forced on them as an end user. Nobody forces you to use Google... Just use another search engine like DuckDuckGo. It is sufficient for over 90% of my searches and I haven’t seen an amp page in ages. AMP for SEO is another discussion, in that case it is kind of forced on you if you want to rank high on the Googlenet.

The problem is that _everyone else uses Google_.

Even though I don’t use Google for search, my friends do and they’ll gladly share AMP pages with me.

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