What is Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP?

AMP is an acronym of Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open source HTML framework developed by Google, which optimizes the user experience by loading the page fast. It not only reduces the load time but the ads also on the AMP loads faster than normal page. The AMP pages also increases the revenue of the website.

Launch of AMP

According to Wikipedia, the AMP Project was announced by Google on October 7, 2015, following discussions with its partners in the Digital News Initiative (DNI), and other news publishers and technology companies around the world, about improving the performance of the mobile web. More than 30 news publishers and several technology companies including Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and WordPress were initially announced as collaborators in the AMP Project.

AMP pages first appeared to web users in February 2016, when Google began to show the AMP versions of webpages in mobile search results. Initially links to AMP pages were restricted to a "Top Stories" section of Google's mobile search results; by September 2016 Google started linking to AMP content in the main mobile search results area. At the time, Google search distinguished AMP links with an icon.

According to one of the co-founders of the AMP Project, Malte Ubl, AMP was originally called PCU, which stood for Portable Content Unit.

AMP Framework

AMP HTML

The AMP framework is made up of three parts: AMP JavaScript, which controls resource loading, AMP HTML, which is conventional HTML markup plus web components, and AMP caches, which serve and validate AMP pages.

Although Google's AMP cache serves the majority of AMP pages, other businesses can offer AMP caches. In March 2017, the internet performance and security business Cloudflare introduced an AMP cache.

Web Stories

Web Stories earlier known as AMP Stories until April 2020, were released in 2018. Web stories are a mobile-focused format for news and information delivery.

AMP Email

New AMP Email section of the AMP framework was announced in 2018. Email clients that support AMP are able to display components directly inside the email.

AMP Ads

The AMP ads are different from HTML/Javascript ads. AMP/HTML ads loads faster increasing content engagement. The AMP ads are free from malware as they are delivered after validation.

Benefits of AMP pages

• Increased loading speed of the website
• Reduction in bounce rate
• AMP pages requires no custom solutions
• AMP pages are preloaded in an efficient way in all browsers
• The ads on the website performs well as it loads instantly
• Increased mobile compatibility as AMP pages loads quickly
• AMP pages fit into any browser and screen size hence these pages are more functional
• AMP pages enhances the SEO, SEO is a technique to rank the pages in Google. These pages are optimized for search engines.