The days of painfully slow dial-up connections and endless load times are long gone. Patience is at an all-time low as instant answers to almost all of life’s questions are within reach 24/7. The majority of digital content is now consumed on mobile devices, but how much of the web was truly built with a “mobile first” mentality? Not as much as you might think. All too often, the mobile website experience is clunky and limited when compared to the desktop experience. Fortunately, Google is leading the charge to change this. The goal is a better internet; one that is tailored to the rapidly growing majority of consumers who demand a fast and truly mobile optimized experience. Google is calling this the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) project.
What is the AMP project?
AMP is an open-source initiative, started by Google, which is aiming to make the web better. With AMP, website speed and performance across all devices is the highest priority. When your website uses AMP technology, Google is able to cache your page for quick delivery from their own servers, effectively making your website’s content load just as fast as Google’s. Rigidly enforced technical specifications ensure that all AMP pages provide the optimal experience that is expected from the new format.
Where to find Accelerated Mobile Pages
Surely you have already seen Accelerated Mobile Pages in Google’s search results without even realizing it. When you perform a Google Search on your mobile device, look for the lightning bolt icon and the letters “AMP”. These AMP pages are normally found at the top of mobile search results because they provide the best possible mobile user experience. After clicking on an AMP search result, you may not notice anything significantly different from the non-AMP results. But take note of the speed in which the page loads (virtually instantaneous), and the fact that the web address in the URL bar still indicates that you are on the Google.com domain.The benefits of Accelerated Mobile Pages
Adoption of AMP technology guarantees your website visitors will have the best and fastest experience possible, minimizing bounced visitors who lost patience waiting for a loading page. Best of all, Google moves AMP pages higher in search results for mobile devices, so AMP pages can even help you rank better and get more traffic to your website. In other industries, AMP pages have improved conversion rates by as much as 95%.
AMP for iHOUSE Elite Websites
Google’s Accelerated Mobile Page technology has been added to all saved search landing pages on iHOUSE Elite websites. Note that AMP pages do not replace existing pages – they are alternate versions of your pages, created specially for Google’s mobile search index. Your AMP pages will look a bit different from the saved search pages you are used to seeing because they have minimal styling and effects, but this is part of what makes the AMP format work so well, and it’s a small trade-off for improved placement in Google search results.
Kevin is a Web Developer and Marketing Expert for iHOUSEweb. He has a degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and he specializes in front end web development, web advertising, and web analytics. Kevin works closely with real estate agents all over the US, and he helps to communicate their needs to the team of Software Engineers at iHOUSEweb.