AMPXF - AMP for Xenforo 2 [Paid] 2.3.0 Patch Level 3

[mazzly]

Just curious. Has anyone tried creating a page rule for https://domain.name/*/?amp=1 in cloudflare with a short full cache setting? It should logically load the page entirely from Cloudflare nodes right? And since these are non interactive pages, it does make sense to do something like this? Probably would become a mess with AMP error fixes though. I do not think this has been discussed before so just putting it out there for thoughts.

I think it was discussed at some point. Or at least something about the usefulness of caching AMP pages with cf

Either way putting an extra caching layer doesn't really make sense in my opinion, as the AMP caches anyway take care of that for you, it doesn't matter if it takes e.g. 200ms for Bing/Google to fetch that page into their caches..
Also as you said it probably makes debugging harder if it is cached and changed are not reflected instantly.

 

[Chromaniac]

righto. i turned on cloudflare setting weeks ago but i still see direct amp links in google. not sure if i am checking it correctly.

just curious though. do amp pages get cached by xenforo configured guest caching system? from my understanding it doesn't. just wanted to confirm. thanks!

 

[JamesBrown]

We're a month in with around 80k pages indexed so far. Not seen any increases at all yet, maybe it's early days.

 

[Max Fridman]

The biggest benefit is yet to come i think. May 2021 google algo update is supposed to leverage core web vitals as a ranking signal.

Google already silently enabled the Core Web Vitals as ranking factor (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075)

Q: Are Core Web Vitals a ranking factor when using Google Search on non-Chrome browsers?
A: Yes. Page experience ranking signals, based on Core Web Vitals, are applied globally on all browsers on mobile devices.

 

[Anatoliy]

3 months gone since I installed AMPXF.
In GSC under Coverage > Valid I have 16.7k
(Submitted and indexed - 11k, Indexed, not submitted in sitemap - 5,5k).
Obviously, there are 0 amp pages in Submitted and indexed, and there are about 100 withing 1000 that Google shows under Indexed, not submitted in sitemap.

So I go to AMP > Valid and I can see that Google shows 2.5k valid amp pages.


I thought that Google needs time to discover all my valid AMP pages, so I was waiting patiently. However, when I go to Coverage > Excluded > Alternate page with proper canonical tag (17k), I realize that Google discovered all my amp pages within the first months, it just considered them as duplicates.



So my question is: did I misconfigure something or it's common practice that Google consider AMPXF pages as duplicates and places them into Excluded?
If someone would share Excluded stats I will be very thankful.

 

[Max Fridman]

So my question is: did I misconfigure something or it's common practice that Google consider AMPXF pages as duplicates and places them into Excluded?

Normal practice adopted by Google in general for AMP Pages. Google Search optimizes content with canonical tags to exclude duplicate content from the same domain on search results. This doesn't block the users to find your AMP pages on mobile.

"AMP pages: AMP pages will have their canonical URL as the non-amp version of the linked pages. In that case, Google shows AMP pages under this index status."

 

[Anatoliy]

Normal practice adopted by Google in general for AMP Pages. Google Search optimizes content with canonical tags to exclude duplicate content from the same domain on search results. This doesn't block the users to find your AMP pages on mobile.

hmm... then why 2.5k is under valid amp pages? why don't all amp pages went to duplicates?

 

[Anatoliy]

May be 17k of amp pages went to Excluded instead of Valid AMP because those amp pages do have issues?

 

[mazzly]

View attachment 250522

May be 17k of amp pages went to Excluded instead of Valid AMP because those amp pages do have issues?

A quick google gave me this answer: https://ampforwp.com/tutorials/article/alternate-page-with-proper-canonical-tag/

If the pages would be having problems, the "Error" or "Valid with warnings" would show them there.. You can also try to test some of those "excluded" ones if you really want to make sure, either with an online AMP validator, or with the AMP validator extension..

On our forum we have 37.2K pages excluded with that reason, and the AMP Valid shows 4.69K pages. (The sitemap has ~13K pages total)

So I would say to not worry about this unless they warn you about something specific

 

[Anatoliy]

So I would say to not worry about this

ok )

 

[briansol]

Yeah, this is normal.

The regular url holds the ranking.
Device (mobile) triggers the conical view to amp if it exists at time of searching.

 

[Anatoliy]

@mazzly , I didn't upgrade the addon for some time and today upgraded to the latest version.
And I found that share icons are missing in posts on amp pages. I'd like to fix it by replacing "fa fa-share-alt" with "far fa-share-alt". What template should I edit?

AMPXF HTML
Code:
<i class="fa fa-share-alt"></i>

Normal XenForo HTML
Code:
<i class="fa--xf far fa-share-alt" aria-hidden="true"></i>

What is the difference here?
Normal XenForo HTML does use the icon in the weight that you have selected in your style properties (by default this is regular, eg. far).

XMPXF HTML does only use class fa which is the class for bold weight.

 

[mazzly]

@mazzly , I didn't upgrade the addon for some time and today upgraded to the latest version.
And I found that share icons are missing in posts on amp pages. I'd like to fix it by replacing "fa fa-share-alt" with "far fa-share-alt". What template should I edit?

AMPXF HTML
Code:
<i class="fa fa-share-alt"></i>

Normal XenForo HTML
Code:
<i class="fa--xf far fa-share-alt" aria-hidden="true"></i>

What is the difference here?
Normal XenForo HTML does use the icon in the weight that you have selected in your style properties (by default this is regular, eg. far).

XMPXF HTML does only use class fa which is the class for bold weight.

Actually the share button is not missing, but uses the amp-social-share component which triggers the mobile OS own share dialogue for sharing.
One caveat with this component, is that it doesn't show up when visited with a desktop browser (even when "faking" to be a mobile browser)

But yes you are correct that the current implementation doesn't respect the icon weight. I'll mark it down to be fixed..

 

[Anatoliy]

Actually the share button is not missing, but uses the amp-social-share component which triggers the mobile OS own share dialogue for sharing.

I'm checking it with my mobile (Android, Chrome) and the icon is missing.
Can I remove that icon from a template?

 

[Chromaniac]

hah. google would no longer show amp icon on amp content. they really are giving up on amp. news articles no longer need to be amp to appear in top stories carousel.

More time, tools, and details on the page experience update | Google Search Central Blog | Google for Developers

developers.google.com

 

[Anatoliy]

hah. google would no longer show amp icon on amp content. they really are giving up on amp. news articles no longer need to be amp to appear in top stories carousel.

that might be a very good explanation of why amp pages are going to "duplicates" folder.

 

[nodle]

So does this mean that AMP is going away then? Will this add-on become obsolete soon?

 

[briansol]

No and all of that is speculation.

Amp, like all tech, will evolve. But as of right now, amp cache is serving 80% of my initial page views.

 

[mazzly]

hah. google would no longer show amp icon on amp content.

That doesn't mean they will stop showing AMP pages in result, just that they won't "highlight" which are AMP and which are not.
This might be a way for them to "hide" that they are boosting AMP pages vs normal pages for mobile. (Quite easy to see at the moment that AMP pages are prioritized for mobile searches by looking at how many of the results have the bolt icon)
They have very likely done extensive A/B testing and figured out that it is better with the icon not showing up..

news articles no longer need to be amp to appear in top stories carousel.

I don't see why they would've needed to be that initially either.. Anyway AMPXF won't show up there so it doesn't affect us..

that might be a very good explanation of why amp pages are going to "duplicates" folder.

The link (https://ampforwp.com/tutorials/article/alternate-page-with-proper-canonical-tag/) I wrote above is from May 2019..
So I will say: no.. This is totally fine thing that is happening and showing up in GSC like that..

So does this mean that AMP is going away then? Will this add-on become obsolete soon?

Nope. AMP pages still have the value of loading fast on mobile compared to what the canonical XF pages do..

No and all of that is speculation.

Amp, like all tech, will evolve. But as of right now, amp cache is serving 80% of my initial page views.

Exactly.

 

[Anatoliy]

right now, amp cache is serving 80% of my initial page views

where do you see these stats?
I'm looking at Google Analytics > Behavior > Site content > All Pages. There are 3700 pages listed for the last week. 1200 of them are amp pages. Total AMP pages pageviews - 4.1k. 28% of total pageviews (14.5k).