Google starts previewing Accelerated Mobile Pages across search results

Google started out the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project in order to serve web pages with the same consistency and efficiency across all mobile devices. In essence, an AMP is a regular page minus all the unnecessary bulk. Stripping out things like tracking scripts, ads, and other overhead, makes AMPs load up much faster than a traditional page.

Google has been incrementally working on the AMP project ever since it was announced last year. Initially, they just introduced the AMP pages for the “Top Stories” section and then, later on, extended it for the Google app on iOS and the Google News Android app.

Google is now previewing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in search results. This means that AMP pages will be distributed across the SERP instead of only the “Top Stories” section.

Google lets you preview the new feature here and the company is also quick to point out that they already have more than 150 million AMP docs indexed and will be adding another 4 million every week. The mobile pages will be labelled with the small AMP logos and when users tap on these results, Google will serve them with an AMP page almost instantly.

The changes will not affect the ranking of the site, according to Google. But that may change in the future, we might add, if Google decides that accelerated pages provide a better user experience.

“To clarify, this is not a ranking change for sites. As a result of the growth of AMP beyond publishers, we wanted to make it easier for people to access this faster experience. The preview shows an experience where web results that have AMP versions are labeled with the AMP logo. When you tap on these results, you will be directed to the corresponding AMP page within the AMP viewer.”

Have you tried out AMP pages? What are you thoughts?