Google wants more people to copy and share AMP links

In October 2015, Google first announced its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) program, which is designed to give website publishers a better way to display and load their pages on mobile devices. However, sites who have opted to use AMP have found that users have had issues with copying and sharing links from those pages. Today, Google announced some changes that should make it easier for people to do both with AWP-based sites.

AMP pages actually have three URLs, according to Google. The first is the original URL for the page, while the second is the AMP Cache URL, which most people won’t ever see. The final one is the AMP Viewer URL, which is the one displayed in Google’s mobile search results.

The first change the company is making is the addition of an anchor button, as shown in the screenshot above, in the AMP Viewer header when a page is displayed in Google Search. This feature will allow the share functionality of a user’s browser by by long-tapping on the link that is displayed. An upcoming update to the Android version of the Google search app will let users share the original URL of a AMP page when the app’s share button is pressed. If you have an iPhone, this feature is already live on the iOS Google search app.

Google added that it is working on updating its Web Share API to let AMP viewers “invoke the platform’s native sharing flow with the original URL rather than the AMP viewer URL”. All of these updates will likely be welcome ones for web publishers that use AMP to make their pages easier to access for smartphones. More importantly, the changes will make it simple for users who access AMP pages on their smartphones to share content with others.

Google hasn’t offered any recent updates on how many publishers are currently using AMP, but hopefully we will get more info as part of the Google I/O developers conference that’s coming up in May.