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Earlier this week, Google AMP announced that it will be changing its properties.
Earlier this week, Google AMP announced that it will be changing its properties. From now on, users will find it easier to view and share the canonical page URL. This move should advantage users and developers alike.
Google AMP are the Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is a special project implemented by Google. Its purpose is quite straightforward. AMP pages should help accelerate the content viewing process on mobile devices. As such, users should find it easier to open, read, and share pages whilst on their phone.
Google AMP is an open source project. It was released back in February 2016. AMP offers an optimized version of the original publisher site. It does so by eliminating third-party scripts. And also various other extension mechanisms. Still, it should only exclude the sources the stop or slow down a mobile page.
No matter how well intentioned, the Google AMP project saw its fair share of criticism. Reports showed that users were somewhat confused in relation to AMP. But even worse, the Internet company was accused of stealing the publisher’s traffic.
This rumor emerged back in October. Since then, Google offered additional details as to the system behind AMP. But some still have their doubts. Now, this latest update should help put a stop to the rumors and accusations.
An announcement on the matter came earlier this week. On February 06, Google released an original blog post. This holds extra information about Google AMP. Posted by Alex Fischer, it also holds details about the latest update. Fischer is a Google Search Software Engineer.
And according to his post, Google will be changing the original URL options. Google AMP will sport a simpler sharing feature. The AMP layout will not see a big change. But it will see a significant difference.
Google will pop a header bar. This will be situated at the top of the page. And it will show the website’s original link address. As such, the web page content should have a clear source.
An anchor button will also be added to the AMP header bar. This anchor button will also show the content’s original link. Besides being easier to determine, this will also make the page easier to share.
Theoretically, the mobile browser should have a native sharing feature. When available, this should be activated by simply holding down the anchor button. Even if this feature is unavailable, users will still have sharing option. The anchor button will show the original page link.
Which will make it easier to simply copy it and then share according to wish or need.
These new Google AMP features should become immediately available on the iOS app version. An Android release should also start being rolled out sometime in the upcoming weeks.
The Google blog post also announced a potential new feature. According to the release, developers are working on a Web Share API. This should allow viewers to pull the original page URL. This could be introduced into the platform’s native sharing flow. Presently, the service uses the AMP Viewer URL option. It remains to be seen when this new feature will be introduced.
Following the update, more publishers could join Google AMP. The fact that the original page URL will be shown may encourage them. And also help dispel any future traffic usage doubts.
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