Google has announced that AMP pages now load twice as fast from Google Search. The company has managed to cut the time it takes to render content in half compared to just a year ago.
Google attributes these speed gains to changes such as server-side rendering and reducing bandwidth usage from images by 50% without compromising quality. Additionally, Google is utilizing a compression algorithm called Brotli to further reduce the size of documents by 10% in certain browsers.
During the announcement, Google highlighted several AMP milestones. There are now over 2 billion AMP sites on the web across 900,000 domains.
Notably, 340 million of those pages come from Tumblr, which revealed it has that many AMP blog posts published across 500,000 domains.
Twitter also announced it would be expanding support for AMP pages to its Android and iOS apps. Currently, AMP URLs can only be shared on Twitter via its mobile web client.
There may be an influx of AMP pages in the near future as the AMP network expands to more e-commerce sites. Google is also developing new AMP ads, which may attract new publishers, given that previous monetization options for AMP pages were very limited.
In related news, eBay shared that it would be extending its support for AMP to millions more of its pages. The e-commerce giant has already published over 15 million AMP pages and will now be AMP’ing up all its product pages as well as name brand and interest pages.
AMP has momentum, and with continued support from major publishers, it shows no signs of slowing down. More AMP news may be on the way next week as the company unveils its AMP Project roadmap for the next quarter. We will make sure to report on any noteworthy updates.
