Users prefer AMP over normal content?

google-update

The title of the post is a statement, so why the need for the question mark you may be wondering? You will find out by reading on….

What are we talking about?

Well, the results of a recent survey in the industry show that people actually do prefer AMP over normal content – or do they?

When the question “are you more inclined to click on an AMP link than a regular one” was posed, a majority (i.e more than 50%) said yes. Just incase you are not fully aware of AMP, it stands for “accelerated mobile pages” and essentially cuts down to a snippet of information you see about a website when searching. The benefit of this is very appealing given that mobile phones have a smaller display area to cite information and text.  The survey was based on respondents of around 1,500 people. All the usual health warnings do come with these kinds of surveys, but this is quite an interesting point which we will come onto shortly.

Out of the range of other responses to the survey question, the main answers and statistics were:

* 24% of people said they would just go ahead and load the page if they wanted to see the information – irrespective of it being AMP or not.

* 13% would prefer to just see the whole website fully.

* 9% gave a ‘data answer’ – i.e. if they were using mobile data they would want to see AMP rather having the complete website load.

The results could be interpreted in a number of ways. Firstly, it could just mean what it obviously states – that people prefer to click on AMP when they are available. Despite this perhaps obviously being the case, the percentage who ‘supported’ AMP in this survey did not give a thumping majority as it was only just over 50%. What may seem initially clear may not be so with a little interpretation and hence the question mark on our post title.

Another explanation for the figures perhaps is because of the public and wider audiences association with Google. AMP was a concept supported by Google and it could simply be the case that because of one, the other is regarded in high esteem. Of course, it may not be that either?

Aside from numbers this survey is important and relevant for one other reason. Whilst this may not be immediately clear it is arguably more important. Most of the discussion regarding AMP that has been available since its launch has focused on how the process is undertaken. This is the first real survey that looks at the effects of AMP – i.e. how well the audience receives it. We all know the impact of user friendly websites, content etc and how Google supports this. Will the first audience based survey on AMP have any impact on such algorithms in the near future?

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