From the SMX West Conference in San Jose, California, March 21-23, 2017. SESSION: AMP: The Next Generation. PRESENTATION: Advanced Tips, Tricks, & Tools for Conquering AMP Problems Today - Given by Paul Shapiro, @fighto - Catalyst, Director of Strategy & Innovation. #SMX #11A

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Advanced Tips, Tricks, & Tools for Conquering AMP Problems Today
AMP Next
Generation

2. #SMX #11A @fighto
CatalystDigital.com
Advanced Tips, Tricks, & Tools for Conquering AMP Problems Today
AMP Next
Generation

3. #SMX #11A @fighto
CatalystDigital.com

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There has been a lot of criticism
Of AMP:
Developers
Users
Webmasters/SEOs
I want to address some of those criticisms.
Maybe Google will answer some in Q&A.

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Common Criticism:
“It’s only for News Sites and Blogs”

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“2016 In Focus”

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AMP Magic 8 Ball
Store w/ RocketAMP
*Native support
for Shopify in
the works.

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Common Criticism:
“This is all to satisfy Google. It’s a Google
product.”
“Other Google products don’t have
longevity, like Authorship & Google+”

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LinkedIn AMP
Example

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Feedly AMP
Example

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Pinterest AMP
Example

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CloudFlare AMP
Example

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Twitter Moments
AMP Example

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Other Notable AMP-Supported Platforms

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Common Criticism:
“Google is stealing your traffic and serving
your site on their domain.”

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X Not the Problem People Make It Out To Be

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X Not the Problem People Make It Out To Be

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Common Criticism:
“There’s no way to disable AMP results in the
SERP for users.”

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✓ Actual problem with
Google’s implementation
of AMP. It is being on
users. Google has Search
Settings for signed-in user
and there’s no reason
there isn’t a disable
option.

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Common Criticism:
“You can’t remove your own site’s AMP
results from the SERP.”

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This post went viral on Hacker News:
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/11/removing-your-site-from-amp/
O Half True
Personal tests show:
• Simply removing the AMP pages will remove the amp cache from
the Google results in ~3 days without doing anything else.
• 301 redirecting AMP pages to non-AMP pages, using update-ping,
and forcing Googlebot to crawl the page in Search Console results
in it being removed in ~1 day.
• Update-Ping (https://developers.google.com/amp/cache/update-
ping) seems to do noting on it’s own.

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Common Criticism:
“App deep links are de-prioritized”

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✓ That’s a Problem

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Common Criticism:
“It’s hard to share AMP results from Google
Cache.”

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O Half True
As of February 6, 2017:
https://developers.googleblog.com/20
17/02/whats-in-amp-url.html
But, still a pain for sharing directly from
the AMP Cache.

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Common Criticism:
“The Google URL showing instead of your
own is a marketing/SEO issue”

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O Partially True
• It’s not an SEO issue. Since modern search engines support the canonical
tag.
• It may cause social sharing numbers to be wrong.
• It’s possible that users are more likely to click back to the SERP rather than
your own website, but there’s UX changes that can be made to mitigate
that.
• It’s a branding concern.

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Common Criticism:
“Google has a strong hand in the
development and propagation of AMP. It’s
not W3C.”

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Sort Of
“All current core contributors to AMP work for
Google, AMP is effectively a Google-led project.
It’s however designed as a standalone open
source project, and we’re inviting developers and
the community to step up and contribute to
become core committers and make AMP fully
independent.” –Paul Bakaus
https://paulbakaus.com/2016/10/13/debunked-10-misconceptions-about-amp/

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Common Criticism:
“You’re forced to use Google’s cache and
Google hosts all of the JS.”

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They’re Working On It
https://medium.com/@cramforce/decentralized-hosting-of-amps-javascript-npm-
for-the-web-75ed698a4d64

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Common Criticism:
“Google AMP Results don’t save correctly in
Pocket and other ‘readers’”

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They work fine
with Safari Reader
and Pocket if
given the chance
to load enough.
O Half True

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Common Criticism:
“You often see blank areas in AMP results and
ads runs slow.”

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• Ads are often malformed producing blank areas. It’s
sort of unfortunate, because there’s only so much
control over what’s being served on ad networks.
• The Ads are actually the same speed, but AMP pages
are so fast that you notice the difference.

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https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2016/0
7/19/but-what-about-the-ads/
A4A – AMP For Ads

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Other Criticisms

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Other Criticisms
• It creates a “splintering” of the web.
• It causes developers to prioritize the creation of
AMP pages over making UX changes that might
be more beneficial.
• Scrolling on iOS doesn’t feel native.
• The back button from Google AMP viewer doesn’t
work as desired.

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New AMP Features, Tech, Tips & Tools

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Python Script:
https://www.catalystdigital.com/smx-2017-python
Requires:
• Python
• Requests package
Ideally AMPBench would run locally, but can
be ran off the appspot demo URL.
Bulk Check AMP Pages with AMPBench API

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AMPBench Script Results

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Structured Data Testing Tool for Previewing AMP Listings
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

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Prerequisites & Code to Add to AMP Pages Example Form
• The redirect URL must be absolute HTTPS
URL otherwise AMP will throw an error
and redirection won't happen.
• <script async custom-element="amp-
form"
src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp
-form-0.1.js"></script>
• Not allowed: <input type=button>,
<input type=file>, <input type=image>
and <input type=password>
AMP Forms are now supported!
<form method="GET"
action="/components/amp-form/submit-form"
target="_top">
<input type="search" class="data-input"
placeholder="Search..." name="googlesearch">
<input type="submit" value="OK" class="button
button-primary other-input">
</form>
Form Examples:
https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-form/
Documentation:
https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-form

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Google Analytics / Google Tag Manager
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/amp-analytics/

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Different Client IDs generated for:
• Your domain’s AMP URLs
• AMP Cache URL
• Google AMP Cache URL
This causes for tracking to show distinct users across theses three versions
of the AMP page. BAD
Note AMP Roadmap Update for Mid-Q1 2017: “Soon you will be able to programmatically substitute values, including the
Client ID”
Google Tag Manager (& GA) – The Problem

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Prerequisites & Code to Add to AMP Pages Modify Wordpress Theme’s functions.php
• Domain must be on HTTPS
• <script async custom-element="amp-
analytics"
src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-
analytics-0.1.js"></script>
• <amp-analytics
config="//www.yourdomain.com/wp-
json/amp-gtm/amp.json?id=GTM-
XXXXXX&gtm.url=SOURCE_URL" data-
credentials=include></amp-analytics>
Google Tag Manager (& GA) – The Solution (WP Example)
Add this snippet to end of your
functions.php file:
• http://pshapi.ro/gtmampsnip
Source: http://pshapi.ro/simoistheman

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617-663-1247 | www.CatalystDigital.com
© 2017 Catalyst | All Rights Reserved
Paul Shapiro
Director of Strategy & Innovation
THANK YOU!