Tag Archive for: AMP

Google is bringing its super-fast Accelerated Mobile Pages to email the company announced this week. During its conference in email, the company unveiled that developers can now take advantage of the mobile-friendly AMP framework when developing emails for Gmail.

The decision gives people the ability to create faster, sleeker emails with a higher level of interaction than typically possible.

Among the many things you can do by incorporating AMP into Gmail, Google recommends:

  • Creating content that is kept up-to-date in real-time
  • The ability for recipients to browse and interact with content
  • Users getting more done in less time without having to leave email.

From the announcement:

For example, say an external contractor wants to schedule a meeting with you but can’t see your calendar, so they send an email to get information on which dates and times you’re available. Within the email is a form to coordinate details. Thanks to AMP for Email, you can respond interactively through the form without having to click a link and redirect to another webpage. AMP for Email could also help you get more done in less time by allowing you to quickly RSVP to events, browse and interact with listings and campaigns, or fill out a questionnaire without ever leaving email.

Google also provided a few examples of what you can accomplish with AMP in Gmail:

AMP for Email does require a higher level of expertise to use, since it takes knowledge of coding to build emails with. Still, with a bit of work and some knowledge, the incorporation of AMP into email opens the door to many exciting possibilities for email.

Google has been using its Accelerated Mobile Pages technology to deliver content almost instantaneously for over a year, and now it is starting to spread the technology to new areas of its platform.

Specifically, Google says it is beginning to use AMP technology to speed up search ads in two different ways.

Firstly, Google AdWords is launching a beta program allowing advertisers to create landing pages using Accelerated Mobile Pages. The result is a faster transition from seeing the ad to being able to convert, and less chance of someone leaving because they get tired of waiting for your site to load.

Secondly, Google is boosting all ads across the entire Google Display Network by automatically converting them to a new AMP ad format. As of today, the search engine has already converted a “significant” number of ads across its display network.

Google says its new AMP ads load 5 seconds faster than regular ads without any visual changes. This way, ads on AMP pages can load just as quickly as the content, creating a more seamless experience.

Google has already begun rolling out its mobile-first index to some users, but there are still a lot of questions about how exactly the search engine’s new separate index actually functions.

One such question got a surprising answer yesterday during the Google State of Search conference, as Maile Ohye told the audience that Google won’t index the AMP version of your page in the mobile search index – even when you don’t have a mobile-friendly alternative.

Google’s Gary Illyes also confirmed the news on Twitter after the conference:

That means if you’ve been using AMP pages as an alternative to making your website mobile-friendly, the search engine will skip over indexing your AMP pages in the mobile-friendly search index. Instead, it will by default choose to index the desktop version within its older index.

There is a way to force Google to index your AMP pages in this situation using a rel alternate attribute, but otherwise Google’s index will default to your desktop versions of pages.

This is particularly surprising because Google has pushed AMP as the ultimate way to deliver content to mobile users quickly and without losing ad revenue. But, in this case it seems the streamlined design of AMP pages leaves something to be desired. It may be the lack of site navigation options is what made Google decide to favor desktop over AMP in their index.

This change will most likely only affect a very small number of websites, but it is an odd choice for the search engine. The vast majority of websites who have adopted AMP also maintain a mobile version of their site.