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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

#181

Post by fauigerzigerk »

dcbadacd wrote: post #174
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP is not needed to promote less bloated websites in search results. Google could easily boost the ranking of lightweight websites without AMP. AMP is an obvious abuse of a dominant market position and Google will come to regret it.

They could, but then we'd see a lot of cheaters even there, AMP is very locked down. I don't like the market position abuse either, but the other parties are far from guilt free.

Of course SEO will never end. But if the question is how to improve the open web, then turning the open web into a Google property is not an answer.

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

#182

Post by michaelmior »

graeme wrote: post #166
michaelmior wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It may not be obvious to users why their site is broken. Of course, at that stage they may blame the site unless they know why the site appears that way in the first place. But it isn't always obvious how to get to the site from an AMP page.

My point was that "broken" feels like the wrong term. I think the site owner should be blamed if content the user needs is not either on the AMP page or accessible with an easily found link.

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

#183

Post by asdff »

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…

Reader view gives you a nice debloated page. So far firefox has been able to accurately cleanse most mobile websites I've used reader view on (some sites like reddit disable it, but I bet threading would be poor on reader view anyway).

It would be nice to just disable JS on mobile though.

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

#184

Post by eclipxe »

mattmanser wrote: post #154
GavinMcG wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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).

Why shouldn't a company be able to decide what they feature on their search results and how they rank things? If every result was a Google owned site, so what? Nothing is stopping you from using a different search engine.

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

#185

Post by eclipxe »

OskarS wrote: post #46
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 don't think I've ever seen anyone on HN defend AMP. We all hate it. It's a pox on the modern web.

I love AMP pages. They load fast and get me in and out of content quickly.

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

#186

Post by r3bl »

dcbadacd wrote: post #171
austinshea wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it your only option? AMP sucks, and I don't see why any user would feel like they need it. AMP is about getting into the carousel search results, and if AMP wasn't the only way to do that, we wouldn't feel forced to use it. To just download text and images I use www.outline.com, but there are lots of ways to accomplish this.

How is using an external service to debloat pages okay but AMP isn't? Feels ass-backwards to me.

Maybe because that's not the only thing it does? It is what Google likes to pretend that AMP is all about, but you're also handing over the control of your traffic directly to Google, and being awarded with the SEO boost.

That's significantly different than debloating your website and remaining in control of the traffic, but you don't receive the SEO boost as a consequence. Even if you make your website faster than it would be if you were using AMP (which is not that difficult to achieve), you're still being punished for not giving control to Google.

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

#187

Post by zrobotics »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #176
zrobotics wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just curious, since I see this brought up all the time- what is painful about DDG? The only times I have poor DDG results is for anything that leverages Google maps, such as a local business. Considering even Apple can't touch gMaps I don't find this surprising, but for general search I switched to DDG because the results were better. For example, my last search was "mdd 3754" to find the data sheet for a mosfet.…

I find their first result is usually as good as Google's, but what I am looking for is invariably #3+ and DDG just falls off a cliff. And their image search is far inferior.

Interesting, perhaps my Google results are just exceptionally poor then, as if I don't see a result in the top 3 on Google then it won't be anywhere in the results. FWIW Google doesn't provide a single direct link to the data sheet for the query I posted in the first 3 pages for me. Even if I append "datasheet" to the query, the data sheet is still pushed to page 2. The only way I get the result on page 1 is to search "mdd 3754 mosfet datasheet".

Same applies to the query "c++ hash map", first page of Google is medium posts & unrelated stack overflow questions, DDG serves https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/unordered_map as the first result. I assume Google is serving better results for other people, I just don't know why my results are so poor, possibly its due to adblocking & tracking protection. FWIW these searches were performed on brave Android with 1.1.1.1 DNS.

Edit: the hashmap query is to provide a slightly malformed example, since what I really want is unordered_map. If I already know exactly what I want then Google can serve results, but that kinda defeats the point.

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

#188

Post by tracker1 »

austinshea wrote: post #163
apexalpha wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why is it your only option? AMP sucks, and I don't see why any user would feel like they need it. AMP is about getting into the carousel search results, and if AMP wasn't the only way to do that, we wouldn't feel forced to use it. To just download text and images I use www.outline.com, but there are lots of ways to accomplish this.

I think the issue is so many sites load too much crap into their pages, for what should be relatively simple articles. The websites could have just written really simple/fast pages... but they didn't. AMP forced the issue.

Of course, google could have just favored really small/fast site that worked well on mobile... but this way they get the extra lock in.

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

#189

Post by tracker1 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #169
apexalpha wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I would prefer a world where AMP isn't needed and websites don't ad 4MB of bloat to their sites. But, we don't live in that world I'm afraid. And for many news websites I don't want to even begin downloading the auto-playing video on their page. So AMP is for many the easiest choice.

AMP is not needed to promote less bloated websites in search results. Google could easily boost the ranking of lightweight websites without AMP. AMP is an obvious abuse of a dominant market position and Google will come to regret it.

I wish they would... boost websites with Google could very well have given huge boosts to small/fast websites, and then the sites would have had to figure it out wrt advertising and bloat. It would have been a much better result.

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

#190

Post by mtarnovan »

mtgx wrote: post #83
mtarnovan wrote: post #14

What if it's not a bug, but Google testing user response (assuming Google is not stupid so Hanlon's razor may not apply)

No tinfoil required. When in doubt about such issues think about whether or not the "bug" or "error" that people found in Google's solutions benefits Google. If it does, then it's much more likely than not that the "bug" was intentional. At best they wanted to test user reaction, or at worst, they were hoping it wouldn't be discovered (see Wi-Fi scanning, Safari cookies block bypass, tracking Android users' location…

Looks like capitalism has blunted Hanlon's razor :-)
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