Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project was launched in 2015 with the promise of making the mobile web faster. That era is over. Google has removed the AMP requirement from Top Stories and no longer gives AMP pages any ranking advantage.

What Was Google AMP?

AMP was an open-source framework that created stripped-down versions of web pages. The tradeoff was significant: publishers surrendered control over their content, analytics, and user experience. AMP pages were essentially hosted by Google.

Why AMP Failed

Loss of Publisher Control

AMP pages were served from Google's cache, meaning publishers lost control over their own URLs, analytics, and advertising revenue.

Forced Adoption Through Search Advantage

Many publishers adopted AMP not because it was the best technology, but because Google gave AMP pages exclusive access to the Top Stories carousel.

Antitrust Scrutiny

The U.S. Department of Justice cited AMP in its antitrust case against Google, alleging it was designed to lock publishers into Google's advertising ecosystem.

Core Web Vitals Made AMP Unnecessary

In 2021, Google introduced Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. Any page meeting these thresholds receives the same treatment, regardless of whether it uses AMP.

What This Means for Website Owners

Focus on optimizing Core Web Vitals, reducing page weight, using lightweight analytics, implementing lazy loading, and choosing fast hosting.

Removing AMP from Your Site

Set up 301 redirects from AMP URLs to their canonical counterparts
Update your sitemap to remove AMP URLs
Remove AMP-specific markup from your templates
Monitor Google Search Console for indexing issues
Verify that your canonical pages meet Core Web Vitals thresholds

The death of AMP is ultimately good news for the open web.