Publishers are dividing down advertising or subscription-led lines as they decide whether or not to stick with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which last year became unnecessary for ranking in the most-competitive spots on Google search results.
Press Gazette understands the format now has most value for free-to-read publishers like The Sun and Mail Online, which still benefit from AMP’s high-performing ad revenue and fast page speeds making for a good user experience.
Subscription-focused publishers on the other hand may prefer to ditch AMP as it offers a worse experience for paying readers who can find themselves being asked repeatedly to log in and missing out on personalisation. Questions also remain as to whether performance in AMP is recorded before or after a publisher’s subscription interface.
As of last summer, publishers are no longer required to use the AMP format for their stories in order to appear in the much-coveted Top Stories carousel that appears at the top of Google results pages for news-related searches. Any pages are now eligible as long as they meet Google News’s content policies.
Around a third of URLs seen in Top Stories in UK and US search pages are now estimated to be non-AMP.
In addition, although it has a much smaller influence on the news publishing industry than the dominant search giant, Twitter discontinued support for AMP at the end of last year.
Publishers are now split between those in a “wait and see” mindset yet to decide if ditching...
Read Full Story: https://pressgazette.co.uk/google-amp-publishers-top-stories/
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