Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

thirtybees.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 159 posts

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#21

Post by anon1385 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #11
kuschku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh? So how do I get into the AMP carousel on Google search without implementing AMP on my site? This is a major ranking factor, in some situations moving sites that would be on page 13! to the #1 spot in search. In other cases, the effect is less visible. That is what keeps people from not implementing AMP. And you get this ranking benefit not for using AMP, or for a certain performance, but it is given to everyone t…

Cloudflare Serves as a AMP CDN

Could you show us some examples of AMP sites served from Cloudflare (and not the Google AMP cache) that show up in the Google AMP carousel and get the AMP logo in the Google search results?

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#22

Post by ucaetano »

themaveness wrote: post #12
ucaetano wrote: post #9

The author seems to completely misunderstand the point of AMP. It was never designed or created for dynamic, interactive content, especially e-commerce. This is like complaining that a hammer is bad for driving screws.

I don't think its that. Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. But the point is, even with the speed and possible ranking boost, does it boost conversions? More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.

> Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust.

And why is that?

> More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.

You should not be using AMP for e-commerce, at least not for anything but a static product page.

Again, if you try to drive a nail with a hammer and it doesn't work, the fault isn't on the hammer, it's on you.

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#23

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

Despite understanding and largely agreeing with the concerns against AMP Cache that get discussed any time an AMP article gets posted on HN, I cannot stress enough on how relieved I feel to see the lightning icon next to a mobile search result, especially on my now aging phone.

Most content websites have become such a massive crapfest of ad-bloat, bad UX, huge page sizes and general usability hell that it's nigh impossible that I'd be able to reach the actual content of a non AMP site in the first 5-10 seconds of clicking on its link. (On my phone that's an additional 1-2 seconds for registering the tap, and 1-2 seconds for navigating to the browser)

My click-throughs to non AMP websites have reduced considerably.

So say what you may, AMP (or FB Instant or its ilk) will prosper until the mobile web experience stops being so crappy.

(Edit: About a decade ago, when mobile browsers were in their infancy and data plans were slow and limited, I distinctly remember using Opera Mini for mobile browsing because it used to pre-render pages on the server and send a very light payload to the phone. This saved you both data costs and made mobile browsing even realistically possible)

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#24

Post by kuschku »

ucaetano wrote: post #22
themaveness wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its that. Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. But the point is, even with the speed and possible ranking boost, does it boost conversions? More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site.

> Its that AMP is borderline an anti-trust. And why is that? > More traffic without conversions generally does not help an e-commerce site. You should not be using AMP for e-commerce, at least not for anything but a static product page. Again, if you try to drive a nail with a hammer and it doesn't work, the fault isn't on the hammer, it's on you.

> And why is that?

Because you only get a ranking boost if your page

> contains a " rel="nofollow">https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"> tag inside their head tag.

and

> is allowed to be cached in the Google AMP cache

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#25

Post by ashark »

ziggzagg wrote: post #13

Mot google projects die organically, with a short life span. No need to keep bashing AMP like this.

This particular AMP-bashing post just reminded me to go change mobile Safari's default search engine to DDG, which I'd been meaning to do so I stop being sent to terrible AMP pages, but kept forgetting to do because in the moment I'm always more interested in finding the info I want on a non-AMP page than fiddling with settings. So it was useful to me.

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#26

Post by sliverstorm »

akras14 wrote: post #4
themaveness wrote: post #3

I imagine it will likely be shelved soon either by lawsuit or just by Google's closing it down.

I appreciate your optimism, but my read is that current Google management is very heavily invested in this idea and will fight hard before they give it up. In addition AMP has penetrated other platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The cat is out of the bag, and it will not be easy to put it back.

The cat is out of the bag, and it will not be easy to put it back.

Yup, now that those damn users have gotten a taste of speed & low data usage, it's gonna be hard to drag them back to how it used to be. We had a good thing going, and they didn't know any better.

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#27

Post by akras14 »

ucaetano wrote: post #10
kuschku wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh? So how do I get into the AMP carousel on Google search without implementing AMP on my site? This is a major ranking factor, in some situations moving sites that would be on page 13! to the #1 spot in search. In other cases, the effect is less visible. That is what keeps people from not implementing AMP. And you get this ranking benefit not for using AMP, or for a certain performance, but it is given to everyone t…

> If I want to run AMP from my own CDN, I can’t do it Got a source for that? I always heard that the criteria for the carousel was AMP-compatibility, not being hosted on Google's CDN.

I don't have a "source", but that is accurate from what I was told by the team behind AMP. In order to make it into carousel, AMP content has to be served from Google cache.

https://www.alexkras.com/i-had-lunch-with-google-amp-team/

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#28

Post by kuschku »

So, to avoid having to argue the same problems always again, here’s a summary of some of the technical and antitrust issues with AMP:

1. You have to embed the AMP version from Google’s servers, you can’t self-host the AMP js, or run it from another CDN. This makes your site unavailable in, for example, China, relies on Google’s systems, and ensures that Google knows every user of your site.

Source: https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#required-mark...

> contain a " rel="nofollow">https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"> tag inside their head tag.

2. You need to allow Google to cache the content, and all Google products will always link to the Google cache version. You can not opt out of this. You can not ensure users visit your own CDN version. You can not prevent Google from displaying modified versions of the pages (for example, the header UI of AMP pages in Google search, and the swiping between pages gesture).

Source: https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/faq

> Q: Can I stop content from being cached?

> A: No. By using the AMP format, content producers are making the content in AMP files available to be cached by third parties. For example, Google products use the Google AMP Cache to serve AMP content as fast as possible.

3. Pages that use AMP get a massive indirect ranking boost. Yes, they don’t get directly boosted, but they get added to the AMP carousel, between the ads and the #1 result, or between the #1 and #2 result. If, for a given search term, none of the top pages have an AMP result, Google will boost the first 3-4 pages that have an AMP result to this place – even if they’d organically rank on page 10 or later. In some situations, I’ve seen results from page 13 boosted to #1.

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#29

Post by ucaetano »

kuschku wrote: post #16
ucaetano wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I want to run AMP from my own CDN, I can’t do it Got a source for that? I always heard that the criteria for the carousel was AMP-compatibility, not being hosted on Google's CDN.

There is no direct source, but you can try it, or just look at the current implementation. Currently, Google serves AMP by serving all AMP search results from its own cache, which allows Google to add features such as the header bar, or the swiping between carousel elements. This doesn’t work if the pages are from different origins. EDIT: I found some sources: > contain a " rel="nofollow">https://cdn.ampproject.org/v…

> Q: Can I stop content from being cached?

How different is this from common HTML caching done all over the web? And that's about using the Google AMP Cache, not about using AMP.

And you still didn't provide a source about "having to use Google's CDN".

Essentially: do AMP pages hosted on Cloudflare's cache do not get into Google Search carrousel?

Re: Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

#30

Post by ucaetano »

anon1385 wrote: post #21
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare Serves as a AMP CDN

Could you show us some examples of AMP sites served from Cloudflare (and not the Google AMP cache) that show up in the Google AMP carousel and get the AMP logo in the Google search results?

The burden is on you to prove that they don't.
Post reply on HN