Google Search launches AMP support out of developer preview

Google today is announcing that it’s now going to start directing mobile web traffic to fast-loading Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) from Google search results whenever those pages are available. About six weeks ago Google began a developer preview of that experience, and now the company is rolling out the technology to all users — no longer will it only be accessible if you visit a special demo page.

For the past several months Google has displayed AMP pages in mobile search results — but they’ve been restricted to the “Top stories” section that’s generally appeared at the top of the first page of results. Now it’s no longer limited to news. It can be for all sorts of pages — including pages on sites like Reddit and WikiHow. Also Shopify is making it possible for its merchants to adopt AMP pages, and eBay’s product browsing pages now support AMP as well, following eBay’s efforts to integrate the technology into its existing mobile site. Disqus now works on AMP pages, too.

“To date we have over 600 million AMP’d documents, up from 150 million in July. These pages are being created by sites from all over the world (232 locales and 104 languages) and span across retailers, travel sites, recipe sites, general knowledge and entertainment,” Google Search vice president David Besbris wrote in a blog post.

Above: An AMP page in regular Google mobile search.

Image Credit: Google

These pages don’t just load quickly (in less than one second, according to Google), they also take up a tenth of the amount of data of a regular page, Besbris wrote.

The open source AMP is also used in other Google services, like Google Play Newsstand and Google News. Meanwhile, Facebook has been promoting its Instant Articles technology, which bears some resemblances to AMP but also has some clear differences.

Google has information about “AMPlifying” websites here.

Update at 3:02 p.m. Pacific: Added information about Shopify’s AMP work.

Update on September 21: Added detail about eBay.

Update on September 22: Added information about Disqus.