Search Engine Land
  • SEO
    • > All SEO
    • > What Is SEO?
    • > SEO Periodic Table
    • > Google: SEO
    • > Bing SEO
    • > Google Algorithm Updates
  • PPC
    • > All PPC
    • > What is PPC?
    • > Google Ads
    • > Microsoft Ads
    • > The Periodic Tables of PPC
  • Focuses
    • > Local
    • > Commerce
    • > Shopify SEO Guide
    • > Content
    • > Email Marketing Periodic Table
    • > Social Media Marketing
    • > Analytics
    • > Search Engine Land Awards
    • > All Focuses
  • SMX
  • Webinars
  • Intelligence Reports
  • White Papers
  • About
    • > About Search Engine Land
    • > Newsletter
    • > Third Door Media
    • > Advertise

Processing...Please wait.

Search Engine Land » Channel » SEO » The AMP is a lie

The AMP is a lie

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are a hot topic right now, but are they really the answer to your mobile page speed issues? Columnist Patrick Stox weighs in.

Patrick Stox on July 13, 2017 at 10:25 am

I thought with the introduction and adoption of responsive design, we wouldn’t be doing any more custom formats for mobile pages — but I guess I was wrong. The web is complicated enough, and we don’t need another code base to maintain, causing more problems for more websites. AMP is fairly lean right now, but as more and more functionality is added and required, AMP will bloat.

One thing everyone knows is that AMP is fast — but why?

On the page How AMP Works, we see the reasons why AMP is fast:

  • Execute all AMP JavaScript asynchronously
  • Size all resources statically
  • Don’t let extension mechanisms block rendering
  • Keep all third-party JavaScript out of the critical path
  • All CSS must be inline and size-bound
  • Font triggering must be efficient
  • Minimize style recalculations
  • Only run GPU-accelerated animations
  • Prioritize resource loading
  • Load pages in an instant

Do you need AMP?

I’d add another important point is that the content is loaded over HTTP/2 when most of the web still is not. Nearly everything in the list above can be done without AMP. If you know your website has problems, why ignore the main website and go to a separate code base instead of fixing your issues? If you want to deliver a faster website to your mobile users, then do it. It requires as much work to implement AMP as it would to improve your website without AMP. Pare down your website the way you’re forced to in AMP, and you’ll end up with a website nearly as fast.

I say “nearly as fast” because AMP’s secret sauce is really in the prerendering. Loading things ahead of time reduces the perceived load speed. Would you rather have a website that was perceived to load faster by users but actually takes longer, or a website that actually loads faster but is perceived to load slower to users? I’d argue it’s more important to feel fast than to actually be fast.

I randomly checked about 50 different articles with Chrome DevTools emulating mobile and loaded pages with the AMP prerendering from Google, without the prerendering (directly to AMP), and the mobile non-AMP website. I found that the prerendering shaved 0.5-5.5 seconds off the load time of the page, and most websites seemed to benefit by about a 1-second difference in the actual load speed, but the difference in perceived speed is even greater. Here are a couple of the timings I received from Search Engine Land on recent articles:

Page #1:

  • 1.3s prerendering
  • 2.0s no prerendering
  • 4.9s mobile

Page #2:

  • 1s prerendering
  • 2.1s no prerendering
  • 1.9s mobile

That’s right — on the second article, the mobile website was actually faster than the AMP page without prerendering with regard to the actual load time. Now, perceived load is different, and the AMP page definitely appeared faster. AMP pages can also be slower than non-AMP pages. The worst offender in the pages I checked came from The Guardian, where the actual load time was 10 full seconds longer for the AMP page with prerendering than the mobile website.

AMP Prerendered Waterfall

12.8s prerendering

18.3s no prerendering

2.8s mobile

What’s amazing to me is that if I had to look at it and guess which one loaded faster, I would have said the AMP page with prerendering. There’s actually a section in Apple’s Basic Performance Tips that states: “The perception of performance is just as effective as actual performance in many cases.” This perceived speed, more than anything else, is what gives AMP a real advantage that you can’t get on non-AMP pages.

I still worry about the future of AMP, however, as any number of policy changes could make AMP obsolete. For instance, extending the prerender spec to allow more than one page would take away AMP’s biggest advantage, and even though this could cause a number of other problems with bandwidth, CPU, security and so on, there are already several ideas like Feature Policy being discussed that could cause the death of AMP.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


New on Search Engine Land

    Google search results spam for ‘Bill Slawski obituary’ shows the dark side of SEO

    New mobile Google ad experiment puts favicon in-line with display URL

    Google launches video health tools to help publisher monetization

    SEO pioneer and expert Bill Slawski passes away

    New Yelp feature: Request a Call

About The Author

Patrick Stox
Patrick Stox is product advisor, technical SEO and brand ambassador at Ahrefs. He’s an organizer for the Raleigh SEO Meetup, Raleigh SEO Conference, Beer & SEO Meetup, Findability Conference, and moderator on /r/TechSEO.

Related Topics

AppleGoogleSEO

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

Learn actionable search marketing tactics that can help you drive more traffic, leads, and revenue.

March 8-9, 2022: Master Classes (virtual)

June 14-15, 2022: SMX Advanced (virtual)

November 15-16, 2022: SMX Next (virtual)

Learn More About Our SMX Events

Discover time-saving technologies and actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges.

Start Discovering Now: Spring (virtual)

September 28-29, 2022: Fall (virtual)

Learn More About Our MarTech Events

Webinars

Take a Crawl, Walk, Run Approach to Multi-Channel ABM

Content Comes First: Transform Your Operations With DAM

Dominate Your Competition with Google Auction Insights and Search Intelligence

See More Webinars

Intelligence Reports

Enterprise SEO Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Identity Resolution Platforms

Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Sales Enablement Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Digital Experience Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

Enterprise Call Analytics Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide

See More Intelligence Reports

White Papers

Reputation Management For Healthcare Organizations

Unlock the App Marketing Potential of QR Codes

Realising the power of virtual events for demand generation

The Progressive Marketer’s Ultimate Events Strategy 2022 Worksheet

CMO Guide: How to Plan Smart and Pivot Fast

See More Whitepapers

Receive daily search news and analysis.

Processing...Please wait.

Topics

  • SEO
  • PPC

Our Events

  • Search Marketing Expo - SMX
  • MarTech

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Youtube

© 2022 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.