AMP
AMP is an open-source library that is designed to produce fast-loading pages that are optimized for mobile. For certain mobile search queries, Google will serve pages directly from the Google AMP cache (i.e. cached pages hosted on Google's servers).
The benefits of AMP
The most common example you will see in the wild is AMP pages used for news stories, which appear in an AMP carousel box above the traditional search results. You can see the AMP ⚡ symbol in the top right hand corner, and clicking through to any of these results will take you to the cached AMP page on Google's servers (you will see the Google domain in your browser).
For search queries that generate AMP results, such as news, this gives you a chance to jump ahead of the pack into a position with high CTR.
AMP requirements
In order to be considered valid, AMP documents MUST:
- start with the doctype <!doctype html>.
- contain a top-level <html ⚡> tag (<html amp> is accepted as well).
- contain <head> and <body> tags.
- contain a <link rel="canonical"> tag inside their head that points to the regular HTML version of the AMP HTML document or to itself if no such HTML version exists.
- contain a <meta charset="utf-8"> tag as the first child of their head tag.
- contain a <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> tag inside their head tag. It's also recommended to include minimum-scale=1 and initial-scale=1.
- contain a <script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their head tag.
- contain the AMP boilerplate code (head > style[amp-boilerplate] and noscript > style[amp-boilerplate]) in their head tag.
If any of these mandatory elements are missing or misconfigured, the AMP HTML will be considered invalid, and may not show up in mobile search results.
All of the AMP Hints are Issues, which means they represent errors or problems that need to be fixed. They are additionally classified in terms of their importance - this should be taken into account when prioritizing implementation work, along with the number and type of URLs affected.