Implement AMP Project framework

thumped

Well-known member
https://www.ampproject.org/

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an initiative to improve the mobile web and enhance the distribution ecosystem. If content is fast, flexible and beautiful, including compelling and effective ads, we can preserve the open web publishing model as well as the revenue streams so important to the sustainability of quality publishing.

AMP HTML is a new way to make web pages that are optimized to load instantly on users’ mobile devices. It is designed to support smart caching, predictable performance, and modern, beautiful mobile content. Since AMP HTML is built on existing web technologies, and not a template based system, publishers continue to host their own content, innovate on their user experiences, and flexibly integrate their advertising and business models -- all within a technical architecture optimized for speed and performance.
 
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No - it's typically links in Twitter or other places.

I've never hit an AMP URL when doing a Google search.
The only place I encounter them is from Google News, haven't seen any 'in the wild' elsewhere.

If I go down the AMP route the goal would be to have a Google News formatted feed of specifically flagged threads for the sole purpose of submitting them to Google News.
 
The only place I encounter them is from Google News, haven't seen any 'in the wild' elsewhere.

If I go down the AMP route the goal would be to have a Google News formatted feed of specifically flagged threads for the sole purpose of submitting them to Google News.
Literally, same. It comes so handy to have AMP for news. Particularly for article thread types but people can extend if they wish.
 
The first thing I do when redirected to an amp version of a site is edit the URL to remove .amp.
I've never hit an AMP URL when doing a Google search.
And that's your choice :)
- It doesn't really matter what you do, because google places the result higher, and the common smartphone user won't care/know what AMP is, they just know that the link that has the small ⚡ icon next to it will load the page instantly (yes instantly) and it will have less bloat like popups etc.

Just because you don't like it (because of whatever reasons), shouldn't prevent the forum software from supporting a standard that helps pages load faster and ultimately rank better => grow your userbase

Sidenote: There is no reason we couldn't have the AMP pages mention on the top (could be optional feature & customizeable text):
"This is a minified version of this page, if you want to load the full page click here"
- That way Brogan can easily skip to the real page that he prefers.

The benefits to having AMP pages are very clear:
  • Faster pages
  • Less bloat
  • Less risk for malicious JS (tracking, mining, what have you)
  • Less server resources needed (pre-cached content from CDNs)
  • Better Search engine Rankings
  • Better growth (because more people visit your pages and some of them will engage with the content)
  • And best of all: If you don't want AMP for your forum, then don't enable the feature (which is your loss) :D
The only downsides I've seen so far in this thread are:
  • Google has initially created the standard (and still partly is involved), and "I don't like google".
    • Some people don't like google, which is fine, but you have to be able to utilize the ecosystem they have built, because it will ultimately benefit you.
      • Slightly offtopic: I've worked in a company where some devs didn't want to add the "sign in with google"-functionality to our app because "google is evil and will track everything", the fact still remained that it helped our users' onboarding vs just having a normal registration. => better growth => more profit. (which was very clear from analytics after we finally had it added..)
  • It would take some time to implement
    • All features will take time to implement (this every dev knows). However, AMP is a very easy to implement for something that is as structured as a forum.. For a blog software like Wordpress it might be harder as content can vary wildly with various magical plugins etc (Somehow, even WP has an official AMP pugin...)
 
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First of the "web search"-results is an AMP link. Few more when scrolling down..
Which has no bearing on what I said. If you're encountering them when searching then, hey, great, more power to 'ya or something, but at least in my searches (and others it would seem) they are not popping up. 🍪
 
Which has no bearing on what I said. If you're encountering them when searching then, hey, great, more power to 'ya or something, but at least in my searches (and others it would seem) they are not popping up. 🍪
Fair enough, I see them, you don't :) (I just wanted to show that they also show up in the "normal" search results.)

Even so, it still doesn't change the fact that AMP pages overall increases search engine rankings and organic growth for sites that have it enabled.

Here are some interesting study results regarding AMP (I'm not surprised as I myself saw major traffic growth when adding AMP on my other sites)
Results
Overall, 22 of the 26 websites (77%) experienced organic search gains on mobile. Other areas of improvement include SERP impressions and SERP click-through rates. A summary of the results across all 26 sites is as follows:
  • 27.1% increase in organic traffic
  • 33.8% increase in SERP impressions
  • 15.3% higher SERP click-through rates
Source: Does AMP Improve Rankings, Engagement, and Conversion?

Even if you would only get 10% increase in traffic from having AMP enabled, that is still a hella lot of traffic and growth for your forum. And things like these compound. (more traffic => more users => more more discussions created => more possibility to rank for keywords => more traffic => ...)

I don't get the people here (forum owners) who argue against AMP, like, don't you want your forums to grow more?
 

No more AMP requirements for Top Stories​

You can find another interesting tidbit regarding the page experience update. Google will no longer require AMP for getting your news pages in the Top Stories section. Now, any well-built, Google News-validated site can aim for that top spot. Page experience will become a ranking factor for Top Stories, so your site better be good.
The writing has been on the while for some time now. AMP is headed for obsolescence.
 


The writing has been on the while for some time now. AMP is headed for obsolescence.

That sounds great! I really hated AMP, I usually bounced back from the AMP page due to weird(in-coherent) scrolling behavior. I wish there were addons that redirected to non-amp versions of the websites. Are there any?
 


The writing has been on the while for some time now. AMP is headed for obsolescence.
I don't know if you skipped to read the rest of the article you linked, where it states exactly why AMP would be needed as part of the ranking factors.
- All the things that AMP brings as a "side effect" of the more restricted markup, are part of the "Core Web Vitals" that google now priorititzes

And the nonsense about AMP being headed for obsolescence, really? People(skeptics) were saying that in 2016, and since then it has only grown and become better.
In the past year, the support for AMP pages in the top 10M domains has almost doubled (source)
- Why are the top 10M domains in the world adapting to a standard that, according to you, is becoming obsolete?

That sounds great! I really hated AMP, I usually bounced back from the AMP page due to weird(in-coherent) scrolling behavior. I wish there were addons that redirected to non-amp versions of the websites. Are there any?
Hmm I'm not sure about you, but you seem a bit biased, having your own XenForo Native Mobile Apps extension you are selling..

What do you mean with the "weird(in-coherent) scrolling behavior."? I haven't noticed anything like that on any AMP page, and I have a nasty eye for details being a webdev myself..

Anyway, if you don't personally like AMP that is fine, you can choose to skip it.
- The fact still remains that fast pages (can't beat AMP in speed) will show higher up in search results (I'm not talking about "Top stories")

As for your addon question, I spent like 5s googling to find this, which should be what you are asking for: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/08/29/d...rome-with-the-redirect-amp-to-html-extension/



There still hasn't been any good argument against AMP apart from biased / Personal (I don't like it) reasons, while the benefits are very clear from an "I own a forum and want to grow my community"-point of view.
- And let's face it, most people on here own/manage some forum and want to grow their communities... right?
 
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Hmm I'm not sure about you, but you seem a bit biased, having your own XenForo Native Mobile Apps extension you are selling..

My opinions could be biased towards PWAs but why AMP. Even re: PWAs it's not biased, PWAs have come a long way since 2017 when we came out with ForumApps. iOS is just stupid for not providing good support for it.

ForumApps serves a very different use case than what AMP serves.


As for your addon question, I spent like 5s googling to find this, which should be what you are asking for: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/08/29/d...rome-with-the-redirect-amp-to-html-extension/
Wanted one for mobile, not desktop, lucky Google doesn't serve amp on desktop. But if it doesn't exist, could make an app for that. :)


Re: AMP
Excuse my naivety here as I am not knowledgable with AMP and everything below is my personal opinion. Sure, speed matters, but what's the point when the user is just going to bounce back in the next 5 seconds. With all the AMP pages, I go to the page and bounce back, never performed any action. I don't have the numbers to back this and maybe it's different for other people, but this is what I personally do. I don't know about you but that scroll always feels different. I have seen some addons that add AMP support to XF but haven't seen how they do it.
But I'm guessing they don't promote engagement, they just increase page views from Google Search(part of the reason is that Google wants to promotes its own technology and increase your websites reliance on it and in turn solidifying Google's own search engine monopoly since it owns the tech).

Sure it's a good exploit to get your Google SEO pumped. It works if only a handful are doing it and it doesn't if everyone is doing it. Even with that, I don't seem to see any pages in my Google search other than NYTimes, Yahoo News and similar news site popping to the top. They would've already showed up at the top regardless, based on what I was searching and their existing SEO.





In the past year, the support for AMP pages in the top 10M domains has almost doubled (source)
I find it hilarious when someone throws vanity metrics around that don't show the whole picture. "Doubled in 1 year" XD

Screen Shot 2020-11-16 at 12.20.42 AM.webp

0.1% is 10k.
It just went from 5k to 10k.
Now the real truth about top 10M sites. That is a huge number!
I have several domains that don't get more than 10 visitors a month and they are in the top 5 Million. That gives me eerie vibes about the bottom 5 Million websites. You could literally buy a domain, install WP, add 1 post, install the AMP addon and be listed in the top 10M. Growing from 5k to 10k after 3 years is hilarious even after Google's capital and SEO fear-mongering behind it.

Disclaimer: This part is based on the W3Tech source @mazzly provided mixed with logical calculation. I didn't do any additional research.
 
Wanted one for mobile, not desktop, lucky Google doesn't serve amp on desktop. But if it doesn't exist, could make an app for that. :)
Ahh then you are probably out of luck.. yeah make an app, only thing is that you probably would have to code a fully-fledged web browser for it :D

Sure, speed matters, but what's the point when the user is just going to bounce back in the next 5 seconds
If the user bounces back within 5s, then your forum thread/post/content is not relevant to the search anyway. (So google will stop showing your page for the search keyword sooner or later)

but this is what I personally do
Yes, here is the problem, you != everyone.
- As long as the content (a forum thread in this case) is discussing what the user is searching for, they will continue reading/engaging with the page, if not the result was not relevant

I don't know about you but that scroll always feels different. I have seen some addons that add AMP support to XF but haven't seen how they do it.
Are you sure you know what AMP is? Because it shouldn't affect the scrolling in any way. It is very basic and semantic HTML that only allows very minimal JS things. (Or maybe some pages you are browsing has some JS-smooth-scrolling-thingmabob?)

What you "Feel" is not really relevant and unless you can actually prove that it is different between AMP and "regular HTML", it doesn't matter.

Sure it's a good exploit to get your Google SEO pumped. It works if only a handful are doing it and it doesn't if everyone is doing it.
Yes, improving SEO will give you the competitive edge. (Up to 27% mobile increase just by enabling AMP as per Does AMP Improve Rankings, Engagement, and Conversion?)
- @Aayush Don't you feel that this would be relevant and easy way to grow your own forum/community? (i.e. enable the SEO option for AMP and get that extra traffic to your forum?)

Even with that, I don't seem to see any pages in my Google search other than NYTimes, Yahoo News and similar news site popping to the top. They would've already showed up at the top regardless, based on what I was searching and their existing SEO.
Again, this is your personal anecdotal evidence. And again: It is not just the "top stories" that we are talking about, we are talking about all search results (top stories, search snippets, normal seach results etc etc)

If you have a niched forum, NYTimes, Yahoo news, etc etc won't be your competitors, so you won't compete with "The big dogs".

You will surely have other competitors (Which are not big established companies), and if you have a competitive advantage (AMP) over those competitors, you will get more of the traffic related to that niche's keywords. And then you get this nice flow:
  1. AMP will show you higher in search results (this is not even debatable), and that leads to
  2. More traffic, which leads to
  3. More registered users, which leads to
  4. A more active forum/community which is equal to:
  5. More relevant content posted around your niche, which leads to
  6. More keywords you can rank for in search results, which leads to
  7. More traffic
And if you are trying to grow your community or monetize your site, traffic = growth | $

I find it hilarious when someone throws vanity metrics around that don't show the whole picture. "Doubled in 1 year" XD
Now the real truth about top 10M sites. That is a huge number!
When it comes to websites and domains, 10M sites is not a huge number at all. There are some estimates 200-400M active websites and 1.7-2B total if you do some quick research.

You could literally buy a domain, install WP, add 1 post, install the AMP addon and be listed in the top 10M. Growing from 5k to 10k after 3 years is hilarious even after Google's capital and SEO fear-mongering behind it.
See, now I know you are just lying 🤦‍♂️ you won't get into Alexa Top 10M unless you do at least some work..
Simply making a WP install and making one post, won't do that for you, literally

As an example here are some stats for some of my sites:

Domain AgeTypePages (indexed)Visitors dailyAlexarank
4yrcontent site~13.3K~10K~89K
3yrmicroservice26~500~932K
21yrforum + wiki~26K~800~1.6M
5yrWB blog (that once upon a time had many visitors)33~20~6.9M
3yrmicroservice~2.7K~150n/a (i.e. over 30M)
3yrmicroservice~17K~100n/a (i.e. over 30M)
4yrWP affiliate site27~10n/a (i.e. over 30M)
(Also keep in mind that I have done a crapton of SEO-optimizations for those sites to get them to where they are.)
According to Alexa themselves, they won't show AR if the site's score is less than 30M:
1605510757387.png

You saying you would get into top 10M with a single post is just a lie... Sorry
 
would have to code a fully-fledged web browser for it
Content-blockers might work. Not sure





What you "Feel" is not really relevant and unless you can actually prove that it is different between AMP and "regular HTML", it doesn't matter.
true


you != everyone.

yes, that’s why it’s my personal opinion.


extra traffic to your forum
Don’t know why people think traffic=growth. But in most cases it’s not. In some cases it gives the site owner an ego boost. I don’t know what it is for your forum/community. But engaged community > any SEO hack or any hack in general. Google would automatically list your site at the top of you provide value and your community is actually helping people.

Google was built to help people find what they are looking for faster. Your website wasn’t built so that optimization for Google visibility is the end goal.

Up to 27% mobile increase just by enabling AMP as per Does AMP Improve Rankings, Engagement, and Conversion?)

That pure marketing material. It’s like publishing an article on ForumApps about how mobile apps are the next big thing and everyone should have ForumApps. Might be true might not be. But while pursuing my Masters, I’ve realized how research papers are manipulated to get results that will get your paper published, so I don’t buy anything that article says without experimenting it myself.

And then you get this nice flow:
Sound great!

See, now I know you are just lying 🤦‍♂️ you won't get into Alexa Top 10M unless you do at least some work..
Why would I? 😂

Bonus: I went to Alexa and typed in a random website. Second click, found this website


A7497AEB-5F15-4F08-997B-C522B8BA7C38.webp

This is their website right now. They are not even using a SSL 😂

Anyways, back to the topic, why don’t people just buy the add on from third party developer that’s been out there for quite some time now?
 
See, now I know you are just lying 🤦‍♂️ you won't get into Alexa Top 10M unless you do at least some work..

1. When you start calling someone a liar, as far as I'm concerned anything else you might say no longer matters.

2. Why would anyone care about being in "Alexa Top 10M"? Alexa has never been a meaningful metricit surfe isn't meaningful today.

You saying you would get into top 10M with a single post is just a lie... Sorry

There you go again, calling someone a liar.

That won't gain you any credibility or respect here or anywhere else.
 
That pure marketing material. It’s like publishing an article on ForumApps about how mobile apps are the next big thing and everyone should have ForumApps. Might be true might not be. But while pursuing my Masters, I’ve realized how research papers are manipulated to get results that will get your paper published, so I don’t buy anything that article says without experimenting it myself.
Okay, so research results that don't fit your standpoint is false.. great..

Don’t know why people think traffic=growth. But in most cases it’s not. In some cases it gives the site owner an ego boost. I don’t know what it is for your forum/community. But engaged community > any SEO hack or any hack in general. Google would automatically list your site at the top of you provide value and your community is actually helping people.
Yeah that was never the question..
Regardless if you have an engaged forum or not, having AMP will show you higher up in search results compared to having the same forum without AMP.
Of course you should as a forum owner also try to improve all other things, but it still doesn't change the fact that with all else equal, AMP will be shown higher up than non-AMP due to it improving various things that are ranking signals...

Why wouldn't we want to have both?:
✅ Engaged community
✅ AMP pages to bring more people into your Engaged community

Google was built to help people find what they are looking for faster. Your website wasn’t built so that optimization for Google visibility is the end goal.
Again, why can't you have both?
In the case of forum threads and posts, the content is very structured and therefore easy to "lay up" in AMP as well.

Why would I? 😂

Bonus: I went to Alexa and typed in a random website. Second click, found this website
Well you are saying something that I strongly believe isn't possible as if it was a fact.

Oh and that website: what??? Just because the site is currently down it can't have a good Alexa rank. (Try putting it into the Wayback Machine)
- If Xenforo.com goes down today, does that mean that it should not be able to have an Alexa rank of 8421 ?

Anyways, back to the topic, why don’t people just buy the add on from third party developer that’s been out there for quite some time now?
Can you link to this plugin and where to buy it? please :)

For Xf1.5 there was one and I had it in use before upgrading to Xf2, there was another Xf2 plugin but it doesn't seem to be for sale.

I would gladly pay 50$ for an addon like this. (Either to Xenforo as an extra to my license, or to some 3rd party dev)

1. When you start calling someone a liar, as far as I'm concerned anything else you might say no longer matters.

2. Why would anyone care about being in "Alexa Top 10M"? Alexa has never been a meaningful metricit surfe isn't meaningful today.
1. Yeah you are right, it might've been slightly childish, although not uncalled for as he is simply stating something as if it was a fact, when I don't think that would be possible at all. (Creating a WP blog, making 1 post, adding AMP plugin, and somehow getting it to be in Alexa top 10M)
- Therefore I called him a liar.

2. It was never a question about being in Alexa top 10M tho.
- he tried to say (without any proof) that Alexa top 10M can contain any crappy site and that it therefore is a bad gauge about big sites supporting AMP
There you go again, calling someone a liar.
btw, both those instances of calling him a liar were about the same thing :)



Anyway, lets skip the "he said she said" and ask you a very simple question @djbaxter @Aayush:

On your forums, wouldn't you want to be able to simply enable a SEO option, and bring in a lot more traffic without having to do anything else?
  • Try to disconnect from the fact that you personally don't click AMP links because you dislike them.
  • Lets also assume that your forums are already well engaged from before ;)
 
So, I'm building one for XF 2.2+.

Continuing the discussion here:
 
I know that my competitors are following my account here but since they are boomer than me, they always lack behind. So, I have no problem sharing this data with you. For those who still can not comprehend the importance of AMP, I would like to show you that of all the 346K sessions on our website, 85K of it was AMP! And this is daily...

1606411077626.webp

Need I say more?
 
I know that my competitors are following my account here but since they are boomer than me, they always lack behind. So, I have no problem sharing this data with you. For those who still can not comprehend the importance of AMP, I would like to show you that of all the 346K sessions on our website, 85K of it was AMP! And this is daily...

View attachment 240605

Need I say more?
What I'm more interested in is, if they convert/register.
 
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