AMP & Google Top Stories Rankings: An SEO Case Study
https://www.searchenginejournal.comIndependent News & Media’s Head of SEO shares the results of testing the impact of AMP on Top Stories, Google Discover, and organic search rankings.
Some of his findings
- Prior to testing, AMP accounted for approximately 50% of all search traffic to the site.
- On February 1st, 2021, when AMP was removed from the Life section of the Independent.ie website, the orange line above (users excluding AMP), merged into the green line (all users) with the blue line (AMP) decreasing to null. This finding suggests that traffic without the AMP article variant simply merged into the non-AMP.
- The conclusion is that having an AMP variant only split the traffic. It did not add any further benefit than our non-AMP news articles.
- Newzdash report (reflecting US news publishers) indicates that about 5-8% of all mobile Top stories on Google are non-AMP URLs.
- He also talks about Google Top Stories, check out the linked article for the full breakdown.
