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Only 1 in 3 Publishers Sees a Clear Traffic Boost From Google's AMP (chartbeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the ultimate-winner dept.

As Google pushes its AMP (accelerated mobile pages) project among publishers, assuring them of the traffic and efficiency gains, a new research finds some shortcomings in that promise. Web analytics service Chartbeat writes: Chartbeat, together with The Daily Beast, collaborated on a two-part research study to rigorously quantify the effect of adopting the Google-backed Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) format on publisher traffic. This study is the first formal statistical analysis of the effects of AMP on website traffic. The overall result of this study is a methodology for analysis that we hope will be useful to other data scientists.

Our overarching finding is that AMP boosts traffic for publishers on average, but most publishers are not average. Only 1 in 3 we analyzed could see clear statistical evidence of a traffic increase. Though it may be possible to optimize AMP implementation to improve monetization, publishers seeing lower revenue on the platform will have a hard time making the case that a traffic boost will make up for it.

The first is an A/B test run by The Daily Beast in which, at random, half of newly published articles were published in the AMP format and half were published in the standard format. This test failed to show clear statistical evidence of higher Google-driven page views on the AMP than non-AMP content. Meanwhile The Daily Beast observed clearly lower revenue for the AMP format.

36 comments

  1. True purpose of AMP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And of course, Google is probably going to promote this harder. I'm pretty sure the true purpose of AMP was never to "increase efficiency for publishers" - It was to be able to better track visitors to AMP pages.

    1. Re:True purpose of AMP by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't recall the pitch of AMP being increased traffic, it was to limit webpages to a subset of elements and scripts to provide a good experience to readers. The reason was of course that publishers had crammed their pages so full of garbage they loaded very slowly and content jumped around.

      Google also said they would prioritize these sites (but supposedly also non-AMP sites that performed well) in search results. I don't see how this would ever increase traffic to popular sites, not doing it might reduce traffic as they'd be ranked lower. Traditionally Google also had the idea that increased web usage was beneficial to them, I think this is true for publishers also - if users generally have a good experience reading articles on the web they'll be more likely to read more articles.

    2. Re:True purpose of AMP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As mobile internet speeds have increased and download limits have expanded though, this premise isn't needed anymore.

    3. Re:True purpose of AMP by Luthair · · Score: 1

      It isn't about your phones internet connection, its about a dozen scripts doing a bunch o garbage with delays talking to remove servers.

    4. Re:True purpose of AMP by shess · · Score: 1

      As mobile internet speeds have increased and download limits have expanded though, this premise isn't needed anymore.

      Have you ever actually read articles on modern websites? The capacities you mention ARE greatly expanded, but when you're downloading 500 resources from a dog's breakfast of servers, your overall experience is degraded. And that is even if you hold everything constant, which is to say you ignore that 90% of those resources exist to serve the content publisher, not the reader.

    5. Re:True purpose of AMP by tepples · · Score: 1

      mobile internet speeds have increased and download limits have expanded

      For some, but not for all. The peak and sustained rates of high-end plans have increased, but in the pay-as-you-go segment, there still appears to be a minimum price for having even 1 GB/mo in the United States market.

    6. Re:True purpose of AMP by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      I don't recall the pitch of AMP being increased traffic, it was to limit webpages to a subset of elements and scripts to provide a good experience to readers.

      Yeah, back when Microsoft was pushing “best viewed in Internet Explorer”, I don’t think they ever admitted that the real point was to coerce visitors into using Microsoft's browser so that Microsoft could benefit... so no way Google’s going to admit that’s what they’re doing now.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    7. Re:True purpose of AMP by SoftwareArtist · · Score: 1

      If you give readers a better experience, in the long run that should boost traffic to your site. But that takes time, and you can't see it in an A/B test. A fast loading story might make people more likely to come back and read more stories, but the next one they read is just as likely to be an old style slow loading one.

      --
      "I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
  2. wut by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How would a data description format boost traffic?

    Are people going to be all like, "hey it's AMP let me click on this link?"

    1. Re:wut by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      How would a data description format boost traffic?

      Are people going to be all like, "hey it's AMP let me click on this link?"

      A few ways: One would be to just use more overhead. Another would be to include additional advertising.

      Probably not that hard to figure out which it is.

  3. AMP sucks for users, who cares about pubs! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As a mobile user, AMP does a LOT of things that annoy me and make the experience stink. From not being able to see what the actual host/site is, to the LOADs of crappy ads that can overwrite content to the 500 pop-ups that slip in and destroy chrome's ability to manage or even go backwards. I will agree, that's a separate issue, and Google DOES respond to bad ad content IF you can figure out the first one.

    In general the mobile web experience is still crap. And AMP offers NOTHING to me as an end user. NOTHING.
    At least not yet.

    1. Re:AMP sucks for users, who cares about pubs! by jlowery · · Score: 1

      AMP is a no JavaScript solution (some scattered applause from the crowd). It's all "declarative", with some vendor-specific components (not sure if you can even write your own).

      For simple storefront pages, it might be worth the effort, but you're not going to be able to share a code base with a React/Angular site.

      --
      If you post it, they will read.
    2. Re:AMP sucks for users, who cares about pubs! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AMP is a no JavaScript solution

      No it's not, an AMP page shows no content when javascript is disabled
      specifically it requires https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js to run

    3. Re:AMP sucks for users, who cares about pubs! by tepples · · Score: 1

      Correct. AMP is a no third-party JavaScript solution. All scripts allowed to run are predefined, which makes it that much harder for third parties to abuse script.

  4. and there's a reason by Tsolias · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Many websites abuse AMP with added elements and make it as useless and bloated as their main website.
    Also I've seen cases of websites that enable AMP even on their homepages and categories...
    Also many publishers use amp as bait to their site, e.g. by having half of the article or page on AMP and the rest in their website.
    This is total abuse of it. Google made AMP so as to have a very light version to offer to readers who are on mobile data, and don't need to download a 7MB webpage to read just an article.

    That's not how AMP should be configured and used. Websites that don't see increase in traffic are doing many things wrong and their users are just avoiding the AMP versions of the pages.
    Google is going to promote it no matter what, but I see that they will punish publishers who take advantage of it.

    1. Re:and there's a reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Many websites abuse AMP with added elements and make it as useless and bloated as their main website.

      .. and now you know why RSS is being undermined. It provides the exact thing Google is trying to "solve", with less bloat. Also why they went after live bookmarks.

    2. Re:and there's a reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody asked for AMP. Nobody wanted AMP. I take active measures to avoid it as do a lot of people.

    3. Re:and there's a reason by Tsolias · · Score: 1

      RSS is promoted a lot from google.
      The news app on android requires you to have a particular configuration on your RSS to get included in there as a publisher.
      Actually they are recycling RSS as a "new" service for news and what not.
      I have already included 3 websites on this new news service and they can cut you off for not having even the slightest configuration right.

      The back thing about RSS is that google cannot include it in the search results and also RSS is finite, it tops at several tens of entries and that's it.
      If you look at AMP code it looks more like a simple xml file than a fully fledged website.

      Anyhow, javascript and bloat in general on webpages is turning them into obstacle on the main platform that google sells ads, mobile phones.
      Google's solution to those webpages is techniques from 90s, text, limited number of elements, almost no scripts and that's it.

    4. Re:and there's a reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AMP is not a great system.

      1. The whole AMP system is an answer Google has to accessing traffic in developing countries, mostly India.
      2. Ad rates in these countries are SUPER LOW. It's just a matter of fact that traffic from these regions is almost not worth it. Advertisers just aren't paying for those views.
      3. AMP is an open source project that is constantly moving back towards being HTML as more and more publishers complain.

      Overall it's a wash. You can't expect publishers who rely on ad revenue to care about traffic from regions that don't generate enough revenue. Unless of course those publishers are in those regions exclusively. Also google has its own caching system for AMP that confuses publishers.

      Can you name a single large publisher that is "excited" about AMP?

    5. Re:and there's a reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google is so great. Google is so giving. Content publishers should use their totally FREE* optimized delivery platform. Google is so wonderful.

      * No, it's not free, you fucking jackass. The cost is allowing Google to usurp even more control over the web.

  5. Google failing is good for the web by alternative_right · · Score: 0

    At this point, anything by controlling monopoly Google that fails is good.

    Through its PageRank algorithm, Google centralized the web, leading to conformity of information and ultimately the abortion that is social media.

    When their services go down in flames like GooglePlus and GoogleBuzz, it is a victory for the decentralized internet over meddling corporate interests.

    --
    Alternative Right.
  6. I Don't Understand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How does a faster road to someplace I don't go make me more likely to go there?

    1. Re: I Don't Understand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because it was stapled to the chicken.

    2. Re: I Don't Understand by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      Why did the chicken cross the Mobius strip?

      To get to the same side!

  7. Primitivism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And this is how backwards minds work. Instead of seeing that 33% are success stories, which is a lot, they talk about the good old times. Times when traffic was not encrypted, and perfectly trackable, just as Vint Cerf wanted it to.

  8. Amp breaks the web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Weâ(TM)re on hols in Bulgaria at the moment. This evening doing research for tomorrow my wife was complaining that a site was all in Cyrillic and she couldnâ(TM)t find a way to switch it to English and asked me to run it though Google Translate. I tried on my laptop... the site came up in English. I looked at her phone... fucking AMP bullshit.

    This trip has reminded me of my other hate for Google: shy do they switch language to the country youâ(TM)re visiting? Why not honour the langauge settings of the browser?

    These areseholes constantly breaking the web, doing things their own perverse way.

    So glad I change my default search engine to DDG a couple of years ago because of my annoyance with Google.

  9. I cannot zoom into AMP pages by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So it is unusable to me.

  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Comment by WallyL · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing this amp isn't whipping the llama's ass...