AMP for XenForo 2.2

[djbaxter]

EDIT: If you voted YES or NO above, please add a comment below as to why you made that decision. It's pure waste of time, AMP sucks or AMP is the best invention since baked bread. I'd love to know your thoughts.

I voted No.

1. I'm not a huge fan of AMP, especially for most forums.
2. I might try it if it were free or reasonably priced but $50 is IMO way too much for an addon like this that will have little or no effect on ranking or SERPs for the vast majority of forums. $10 would be more appropriate.

 

[Recep Baltaş]

I can be a beta tester 🤜

 

[JoyFreak]

I can be a beta tester 🤜

Contact @mazzly

 

[mazzly]

I can be a beta tester 🤜

I'll send you some things later today

 

[djbaxter]

I still think so.. AMP pages make faster load/better experience for mobile users => higher position in search results (not talking top stories here)

Page load speed is only a very small (almost insignificant) Google ranking factor:

Google SEO 101: Page Speed Optimization

Google goes in depth on the subject of page speed in its latest episode of the SEO Mythbusting video series.

www.searchenginejournal.com

Something that has to be stated every time there’s a discussion around page speed: AMP is not a ranking factor. AMP is important insofar as page speed is important, but AMP on its own is not a ranking signal.

Splitt concludes the discussion with a simple explanation of how page speed works as a ranking factor.

It’s more or less a tie breaker in the sense that if two pages have comparable content, the faster page will rank ahead of the other.

Confirmed: Google Site Speed Is A Teeny-Tiny Ranking Factor

I've been saying this for years but now Google has confirmed that the site speed ranking signals are a small, even

www.seroundtable.com

I've been saying this for years but now Google has confirmed that the site speed ranking signals are a small, even "teeny tiny" ranking factor in Google search. Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter "ranking wise it's a teeny tiny factor."

He equated it to the HTTPS ranking factor, saying it is given almost the same weight of the HTTPS signal. He said "very similar to https ranking boost" in terms of how important it is to ranking.

Here are those tweets:

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Of course, site speed is important to your users and your conversions - but for Google ranking, it is small.

We said in the past that only super slow pages would be impacted. But John Mueller said recently Google might look to make the speeds more granular. But would that change anything?

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

[mazzly]

Page load speed is only a very small (almost insignificant) Google ranking factor:

Google SEO 101: Page Speed Optimization

Google goes in depth on the subject of page speed in its latest episode of the SEO Mythbusting video series.

www.searchenginejournal.com

Confirmed: Google Site Speed Is A Teeny-Tiny Ranking Factor

I've been saying this for years but now Google has confirmed that the site speed ranking signals are a small, even

www.seroundtable.com

I will get back to you in a couple of days on this topic, but since installing the addon on my own site on Sunday evening I have seen a quite nice bump in the google search console.. It might be a fluke, but I will let you know in a bit more time

But so far my traffic is up, this is exactly what I saw on my other site when I implemented it there (custom Django site with content)

Also, it is so far exactly in line with what this research shows

 

[djbaxter]

I will get back to you in a couple of days on this topic, but since installing the addon on my own site on Sunday evening I have seen a quite nice bump in the google search console.. It might be a fluke, but I will let you know in a bit more time

But so far my traffic is up, this is exactly what I saw on my other site when I implemented it there (custom Django site with content)

Also, it is so far exactly in line with what this research shows

Beware of the correlation vs causation issue.

Google changes things in little or big ways almost daily. In particular, in recent months they have been trying to fix a major problem with new pages not getting indexed and old pages being dropped from the search index in Search Consloe and Google My Business. In the past few days, they seem to have finally made some significant progress in fixing this issue. Based on other comments from Google and independent large case studies (not single site case studies which are often misleading and essentially useless), i would suggest that fixing the indexing issue is a far more likely reason you may have seen changes in the Search Console.

 

[mazzly]

Google changes things in little or big ways almost daily. In particular, in recent months they have been trying to fix a major problem with new pages not getting indexed and old pages being dropped from the search index in Search Consloe and Google My Business. In the past few days, they seem to have finally made some significant progress in fixing this issue. Based on other comments from Google and independent large case studies (not single site case studies which are often misleading and essentially useless), i would suggest that fixing the indexing issue is a far more likely reason you may have seen changes in the Search Console.

Yes for sure, I will get back to you once we have more testers on board that can verify that the analytics/search console is not just a fluke.

 

[briansol]

in for testing. i have a big board

 

[mazzly]

in for testing. i have a big board

Yep I will let send you some details later

 

[arn]

Page load speed is only a very small (almost insignificant) Google ranking factor:

Google SEO 101: Page Speed Optimization

Google goes in depth on the subject of page speed in its latest episode of the SEO Mythbusting video series.

www.searchenginejournal.com

Confirmed: Google Site Speed Is A Teeny-Tiny Ranking Factor

I've been saying this for years but now Google has confirmed that the site speed ranking signals are a small, even

www.seroundtable.com

But speed is a ranking factor, albeit small -- like every ranking factor. And Core Web Vitals ranking factors are coming too. If you are monetizing your site at all, $50 one time seems a small price to pay to improve your site speed ongoing.

Google Mobile First Indexing and Scoring of Sites with Mobile and AMP Versions

Google's John Mueller explained how Google's Mobile First Index will index and score sites that have Desktop, Mobile and AMP versions

www.searchenginejournal.com

Google has said they will use AMP for speed testing, and non-amp for indexing.

So that’s something where in this situation with mobile first indexing, we would index the mobile version.
We would use the AMP version with regards to testing usability and speed.

The other factor though how much better/worse is for AMP vs your standard Xenforo pages:

@mazzly - do you have a http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ comparison between the AMP page and the non-AMP Xenforo page?

The other issue though with AMP is monetization is not as straightforward. You can't use traditional banner tags. Google Adsense has an AMP solution, but you should check with your ad provider if they support AMP or not. And it monetizes worse than non-AMP traditionally.

 

[JoyFreak]

But speed is a ranking factor, albeit small -- like every ranking factor. And Core Web Vitals ranking factors are coming too. If you are monetizing your site at all, $50 one time seems a small price to pay to improve your site speed ongoing.

Google Mobile First Indexing and Scoring of Sites with Mobile and AMP Versions

Google's John Mueller explained how Google's Mobile First Index will index and score sites that have Desktop, Mobile and AMP versions

www.searchenginejournal.com

Google has said they will use AMP for speed testing, and non-amp for indexing.



The other factor though how much better/worse is for AMP vs your standard Xenforo pages:

@mazzly - do you have a http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ comparison between the AMP page and the non-AMP Xenforo page?

The other issue though with AMP is monetization is not as straightforward. You can't use traditional banner tags. Google Adsense has an AMP solution, but you should check with your ad provider if they support AMP or not. And it monetizes worse than non-AMP traditionally.

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

vs

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

 

[mazzly]

@mazzly - do you have a http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ comparison between the AMP page and the non-AMP Xenforo page?

Did a quick test

	Mobile score	Desktop score
non-amp	55	96
AMP	91	98

The biggest problem for Mobile score and the css loading and JS hogging the main thread.

The other issue though with AMP is monetization is not as straightforward. You can't use traditional banner tags. Google Adsense has an AMP solution, but you should check with your ad provider if they support AMP or not. And it monetizes worse than non-AMP traditionally.

I would say at least that the amp-adsense performs really well on my other site, I'm guessing this has something to do with Google being able to better test/optimize for earnings on the AMP CDN they serve they results from, but that is just a theory..

 

[mazzly]

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

vs

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

DING DING DING! We have a winner!

 

[JoyFreak]

DING DING DING! We have a winner!

Amazing results.

 

[mazzly]

Amazing results.

Although, one thing to note is that the AMP variant of your page doesn't have ads at the moment..

 

[JoyFreak]

Although, one thing to note is that the AMP variant of your page doesn't have ads at the moment..

Yeah, will have to sort that out and post results again.

 

[arn]

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

vs

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

Nice. here's the money slide:

Xenforo:


Amp:



edit: Though I don't see ads on your AMP page yet. That will make a small impact.

 

[JoyFreak]

Nice. here's the money slide:

Xenforo:
View attachment 240432

Amp:

View attachment 240433

edit: Though I don't see ads on your AMP page yet. That will make a small impact.

Yeah, no ads yet. It will most probably be one at the top and one at the bottom, like on the desktop version. I have just included the amp-variant to my installation. Just getting a confirmation from Mazzy to see if it's rendered via the add-on. Though the ad will make a slight impact and will still produce better results than the desktop verison.

 

[Masetrix]

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

vs

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

20 vs. 96 on Mobile. Wow, that's a big difference - I'm very surprised
That's exactly what I'm looking for for our forum.

Still looking for beta testers?