Mediahuis Ireland decommissioned AMP. This presentation goes into detail on what the impact was on SEO metrics such as page experience and search traffic. TLDR deleting AMP had no impact on SEO.

1. Future of AMP in News &
Top Stories
Dan Smullen, Head of SEO Mediahuis IRL
News & Editorial SEO Summit - Oct 2021
NewsSEO.io

2. Ireland’s most read websites;

3. 3
Why AMP?

5. “In 2010 Mobile web pages took an
average of 19 seconds to open”
#NESS2021

6. #NESS2021

8. “What could Google do for news?”

9. 9
How does AMP Work?

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Google AMP & SEO Guide: Search Engine Journal

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Web
https://www.wired.com/sto
ry/why-facebook-
instagram-whatsapp-went-
down-outage/
AMP
https://www.wired.com/story/why-
facebook-instagram-whatsapp-
went-down-outage/amp/
AMP Cache
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wi
red.com/story/why-facebook-
instagram-whatsapp-went-down-
outage/amp/

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Google AMP’s unfair
advantage

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Image Source: Search Engine Land #NESS2021

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Image Source: State of Digital #NESS2021

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#NESS2021

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Image Source: AMP.dev
For some publishers it worked
#NESS2021

19. For others…
-200% lower
AMP CPM
#NESS2021

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Why did we
decommission AMP?

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Our Business Focus Changed

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“Digital First Print Second” From 0
to 30k Subscribers in a year

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The AMP Cache business problem.
#NESS2021

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AMP does support paywalls with
it’s amp-subscriptions
Component but relies on
cookies.
#NESS2021

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Relying on cookies to
keep subscribers
logged in across the
premium content flow
on different domains is
not perfect.
#NESS2021

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Some publishers still use ‘first click
free’ with AMP.
Not for free - https://amp.ft.com/content/70cb075e-41e8-4edc-85a5-a14b70c8fb45
Free https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/70cb075e-41e8-4edc-85a5-a14b70c8fb45

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For us, it was“Business First AMP
Second”
SEJ: Testing the impact of AMP on Top Stories, Google Discover, and
organic search rankings.

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What happens when you
delete AMP on traffic?

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No impact on traffic but decline in mobile
new users

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Total clicks from search results declined

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Desktop ranking no impact, mobile
rankings filtered out!

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Just before we were
considering a U-Turn....

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Google announces page experience
rollout mid-june.
#NESS2021

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Mobile non-AMP rankings fixed
#NESS2021
After mid june

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Impact of the mid-june announcement
#NESS2021

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And we were not the only
ones!

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NewzDash Google Search Top Stories AMP Tracker
#NESS2021

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But since deleting AMP, we now had 0%
page experience?
#NESS2021

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That’s not what the R.U.M data
showed
Measuring Web Vitals
using Google
Analytics

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Will page experience give
a new unfair advantage?

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“…relevance is still by far
much more important. So just
because your website is faster
with regards to Core Web Vitals
than some competitors doesn’t
necessarily mean, you will jump
to position number one in the
search results.”

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What impact does
improving your core web
vitals have?

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Note: AMP offers “strong” core web
vitals scores
#NESS2021

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So What? Competitor insights helps build
the business case
Competitive analysis dashboard for Core Web Vitals
using Google Data Studio - Deepcrawl #NESS2021

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Tip: Google Search Console (Field data)
can help pinpoint the biggest issues
#NESS2021

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Tip: But Lab Tools are best for developer
debugging not for executive team reporting
#NESS2021

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Now what impact does improving LCP
have?
#NESS2021

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No detectable impact.
But the news agenda can skew
causal impact of tests.

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Top Stories Eligibility Vs Page Experience Ranking Factor
Performance as a Ranking Factor: The State of the Web and Core Web Vitals - Moz.com

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Is improving Core Web
Vitals still worth it?

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#NESS2021
“Search traffic is not the only
business impact measurement
we should report on to get
executive buy in for SEO
initiatives”
Think outside of SEO KPI’s

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When a site meets the Core Web Vitals
thresholds
24%
Lower
abandonment rate
#NESS2021
The Science behind Web Vitals

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Measuring Ad Speed and Business
Impact
#NESS2021
“With 1s of added delay, impressions
decreased by 1.1% for mobile traffic and
1.9% for desktop traffic”
web.dev/fast-ads-matter
Measuring Cost of Latency in Ad Manager

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What does the future of
AMP look like?

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The future of AMP is uncertain
#NESS2021

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Very uncertain...
#NESS2021

60. AMP vs
Non AMP

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You may no longer need to
sacrifice on functionality
#NESS2021

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Signed Exchanges the new AMP?
#NESS2021
Cloudflare adds automated Signed
Exchanges for Google Search - Coywolf

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Should we consider
decommissioning AMP?

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“AMP was a Google top
stories requirement, never a
ranking factor” #NESS2021

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Google have now updated their
documentation on Top Stories
eligibility

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AMP is no longer a Google News APP requirement

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AMP is not required for Google
Discover
#NESS2021

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Tip: Google Discover Image Settings
#NESS2021

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You need to understand the cost
impact of deleting AMP vs
improving non-AMP?
#NESS2021

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For us AMP was too expensive to
the business
#NESS2021

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In case you decide to
delete AMP, here’s how
to not impact search
traffic?

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1. Remove the link tag with the relation
“amphtml” from the canonical.

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2. Redirect
(301) the AMP
variant’s to the
canonical.

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3. Re-submit
XML sitemaps
Update AMP Content

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About Me:
DanSmullen.com
twitter.com/@dansmull
slideshare.net/danrsmullen
linkedin.com/in/danielrsmullen