- Our search traffic largely comes from Google, which already serves our AMP pages in Google News. Google is also switching mobile search results to AMP links, and that means almost all of our search visitors will see AMP pages instead of the mobile web.
- Our social traffic mix is dominated by Facebook, where we already serve every article in Facebook Instant Articles — and features and reviews are coming soon. That means a huge percentage of our social traffic is already seeing Instant Articles instead of the mobile web, and that number will just go up as we deliver more story types in IA.
I’m always for a better user experience. That’s what makes Google’s push to AMP so captivating. Google even shows AMP articles as “lightning fast” on Google SERPs.
But one thing to remember: AMP only runs selects ad networks and analytics tools that Google controls. The same is true for Facebook’s Instant Articles. End users get amazingly fast load times and simplified experience. The publisher loses control over their montization, experience, and tracking strategies. Some are arguing this is the end of the open web. When a giant like Facebook or Google controls both the discovery and curation platforms, publishers are at their mercy.
Both AMP and FB Instant Articles continue to evolve and gain new functionality, it will certainly be interesting to see how this changes publisher’s strategies.