Twitter rolls back AMP support, no longer sends users to AMP pages

With social media referrals to AMP pages cut down by the change, the reasons for supporting AMP are getting fewer.

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If you are noticing less traffic to your website’s AMP pages coming from Twitter, turns out there is a reason for that: Twitter has subtly updated its AMP guidelines page on its Developer site to say support for AMP will be phased out by the fourth quarter.

How that might affect you. Previously, if a mobile user clicked on a link to your site, Twitter would redirect them to the AMP version of that page if an AMP version was available. Now, that won’t happen and users will just load the native mobile/responsive version of your content.

Dig deeper: We’re turning off AMP at Search Engine Land.

Thanks for telling us. We’ve heard anecdotally that publishers have been seeing AMP traffic fall, especially since Google started putting non-AMP pages in its Top Stories section. But it was David Esteve, audience development specialist and product manager at Marfeel, and technical SEO consultant Christian Oliveira who spotted the update in Twitter’s documentation.

Looking at our own data, we’ve seen sharp Twitter referral declines since August. But, traffic completely bottomed out in November suggesting the rollout is complete.

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Twitter referrals to Search Engine Land AMP pages in 2021.

We’ve seen similar declines in LinkedIn referrals to AMP pages and have reached out to the company to find out if it is also dropping support. We will update this post when we get a definitive answer.

Why we care. Since Google announced AMP will no longer be required for Top Stories, many publishers have been asking themselves if continuing to support AMP is still worth it. The main worry has been the risk of traffic loss if publishers rely fully on their native mobile experiences for ranking. But, if social media traffic to AMP pages is going to drop as support is lifted, the need for AMP seems to get smaller.

Dig deeper: Google throttled non-AMP page speeds, created format to hamper header bidding, antitrust complaint claims


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


About the author

Henry Powderly
Contributor
Henry Powderly was vice president of content for Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. With more than a decade in editorial leadership positions, he was responsible for content strategy and event programming for the organization.

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