Only 1 in 3 Publishers Sees a Clear Traffic Boost From Google's AMP (chartbeat.com) 36
As Google pushes its AMP (accelerated mobile pages) project among publishers, assuring them of the traffic and efficiency gains, a new research finds some shortcomings in that promise. Web analytics service Chartbeat writes: Chartbeat, together with The Daily Beast, collaborated on a two-part research study to rigorously quantify the effect of adopting the Google-backed Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format on publisher traffic. This study is the first formal statistical analysis of the effects of AMP on website traffic. The overall result of this study is a methodology for analysis that we hope will be useful to other data scientists.
Our overarching finding is that AMP boosts traffic for publishers on average, but most publishers are not average. Only 1 in 3 we analyzed could see clear statistical evidence of a traffic increase. Though it may be possible to optimize AMP implementation to improve monetization, publishers seeing lower revenue on the platform will have a hard time making the case that a traffic boost will make up for it.
The first is an A/B test run by The Daily Beast in which, at random, half of newly published articles were published in the AMP format and half were published in the standard format. This test failed to show clear statistical evidence of higher Google-driven page views on the AMP than non-AMP content. Meanwhile The Daily Beast observed clearly lower revenue for the AMP format.
Our overarching finding is that AMP boosts traffic for publishers on average, but most publishers are not average. Only 1 in 3 we analyzed could see clear statistical evidence of a traffic increase. Though it may be possible to optimize AMP implementation to improve monetization, publishers seeing lower revenue on the platform will have a hard time making the case that a traffic boost will make up for it.
The first is an A/B test run by The Daily Beast in which, at random, half of newly published articles were published in the AMP format and half were published in the standard format. This test failed to show clear statistical evidence of higher Google-driven page views on the AMP than non-AMP content. Meanwhile The Daily Beast observed clearly lower revenue for the AMP format.
Re:True purpose of AMP (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't recall the pitch of AMP being increased traffic, it was to limit webpages to a subset of elements and scripts to provide a good experience to readers. The reason was of course that publishers had crammed their pages so full of garbage they loaded very slowly and content jumped around.
Google also said they would prioritize these sites (but supposedly also non-AMP sites that performed well) in search results. I don't see how this would ever increase traffic to popular sites, not doing it might reduce traffic as they'd be ranked lower. Traditionally Google also had the idea that increased web usage was beneficial to them, I think this is true for publishers also - if users generally have a good experience reading articles on the web they'll be more likely to read more articles.
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As mobile internet speeds have increased and download limits have expanded though, this premise isn't needed anymore.
Have you ever actually read articles on modern websites? The capacities you mention ARE greatly expanded, but when you're downloading 500 resources from a dog's breakfast of servers, your overall experience is degraded. And that is even if you hold everything constant, which is to say you ignore that 90% of those resources exist to serve the content publisher, not the reader.
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mobile internet speeds have increased and download limits have expanded
For some, but not for all. The peak and sustained rates of high-end plans have increased, but in the pay-as-you-go segment, there still appears to be a minimum price for having even 1 GB/mo in the United States market.
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I don't recall the pitch of AMP being increased traffic, it was to limit webpages to a subset of elements and scripts to provide a good experience to readers.
Yeah, back when Microsoft was pushing “best viewed in Internet Explorer”, I don’t think they ever admitted that the real point was to coerce visitors into using Microsoft's browser so that Microsoft could benefit... so no way Google’s going to admit that’s what they’re doing now.
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If you give readers a better experience, in the long run that should boost traffic to your site. But that takes time, and you can't see it in an A/B test. A fast loading story might make people more likely to come back and read more stories, but the next one they read is just as likely to be an old style slow loading one.
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How would a data description format boost traffic?
Are people going to be all like, "hey it's AMP let me click on this link?"
A few ways: One would be to just use more overhead. Another would be to include additional advertising.
Probably not that hard to figure out which it is.
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AMP is a no JavaScript solution (some scattered applause from the crowd). It's all "declarative", with some vendor-specific components (not sure if you can even write your own).
For simple storefront pages, it might be worth the effort, but you're not going to be able to share a code base with a React/Angular site.
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Correct. AMP is a no third-party JavaScript solution. All scripts allowed to run are predefined, which makes it that much harder for third parties to abuse script.
and there's a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Many websites abuse AMP with added elements and make it as useless and bloated as their main website.
Also I've seen cases of websites that enable AMP even on their homepages and categories...
Also many publishers use amp as bait to their site, e.g. by having half of the article or page on AMP and the rest in their website.
This is total abuse of it. Google made AMP so as to have a very light version to offer to readers who are on mobile data, and don't need to download a 7MB webpage to read just an article.
That's not how AMP should be configured and used. Websites that don't see increase in traffic are doing many things wrong and their users are just avoiding the AMP versions of the pages.
Google is going to promote it no matter what, but I see that they will punish publishers who take advantage of it.
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RSS is promoted a lot from google.
The news app on android requires you to have a particular configuration on your RSS to get included in there as a publisher.
Actually they are recycling RSS as a "new" service for news and what not.
I have already included 3 websites on this new news service and they can cut you off for not having even the slightest configuration right.
The back thing about RSS is that google cannot include it in the search results and also RSS is finite, it tops at several tens of entries and
Google failing is good for the web (Score:1)
At this point, anything by controlling monopoly Google that fails is good.
Through its PageRank algorithm, Google centralized the web, leading to conformity of information and ultimately the abortion that is social media.
When their services go down in flames like GooglePlus and GoogleBuzz, it is a victory for the decentralized internet over meddling corporate interests.
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Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?
To get to the same side!
I cannot zoom into AMP pages (Score:1)
So it is unusable to me.
Comment (Score:2)
I'm guessing this amp isn't whipping the llama's ass...