Many publishers, in the interest of faster-loading site speeds for mobile users, have implemented Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) technology. This allows them to quickly create lightweight versions of articles that load faster than traditional websites.
Twitter announced that starting today (Oct. 27), they are discontinuing support for Google AMP, and will no longer automatically direct users to the AMP versions of publishers’ pages. Instead, Twitter will direct users to the mobile or desktop version of the site.
What does this mean for publishers? If you’re using AMP, you don’t necessarily need to take any action – your links will still work. However, it’s now more important than ever to make sure that your “normal” pages are loading quickly – because social media users will no longer be sent to the AMP version when the click your link. Plus, don’t forget that Page Load Speed is a signal that Facebook takes into consideration in their News Feed algorithm as well, so it’s a crucial measure to pay attention to.
Google’s Test My Site tool allows you to get a score for your page’s mobile load time and will make recommendations to help improve your site’s loading speed. Sites that take more than 4 seconds to begin loading on a 4G connection are considered to have a Poor score.
Some of Google’s high-impact recommendations include using efficient image encoding protocols to reduce image size, having an efficient cache policy to speed up repeat visits, and reducing the overall size of network requests to reduce the total amount of payload attached to a page. Review your results with your CMS provider to make sure your load times aren’t impacting your traffic.
