Should you still invest in AMP for your mobile strategy?

Is AMP a universal format or just for news?

John Mueller's statement clarifies a widespread misunderstanding. From a technical standpoint, AMP works on any type of mobile content: product sheets, service pages, landing pages, blog articles. The framework imposes no thematic restrictions.

But here lies the trap: Google only gives special visibility to news pages through the dedicated carousel. This carousel appears in results for news queries and offers premium placement with thumbnails. If your site is not classified as news by Google, you will never gain access to this space, even with perfectly compliant AMP pages.

What does this change for standard SEO?

The first thing to understand is that AMP is not a direct ranking factor. Mueller has repeated this several times elsewhere. What matters is loading speed and user experience, which you can achieve whether with AMP or a well-optimized classic page.

The main benefit of AMP remains its raw loading speed. Simplified HTML, limited JavaScript, and Google's cache ensure that an AMP page loads almost instantly. For slow or poorly optimized sites, it's a technical shortcut to good mobile performance. However, if your technical stack is already performing well, the gap significantly narrows.

Why does Google restrict the carousel to news?

This is an editorial and commercial decision, not technical. The AMP news carousel meets a specific need: to quickly display fresh information on mobile. Google built this environment to compete with Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News.

For other types of content, Google likely believes that standard Core Web Vitals are sufficient as a mobile quality criterion. Expanding the carousel to all content types would dilute its impact and complicate the user experience with too many different formats in the search results.

• AMP technically works on all types of pages but only news has a differentiated display in the results
• The AMP news carousel is a premium placement reserved for news sites recognized by Google
• For other sites, AMP remains a speed optimization tool, not a SERP advantage
• The speed achieved with AMP can be replicated with advanced classic optimization
• Google now prioritizes Core Web Vitals as the universal standard of mobile performance

Is Google's position consistent with field observations?

Yes, and it’s even one of the few statements about AMP that leaves no gray area. The audits I conduct consistently confirm: no non-news site benefits from the AMP carousel, regardless of the quality of their implementation. E-commerce sites that heavily invested in AMP between 2016 and 2019 never gained access to this privileged display.

However, Mueller remains silent on a crucial point: the actual impact of AMP on the click-through rate for pages outside the carousel. Some tests show a slight CTR boost related to the lightning icon in standard search results, but this visual marker has gradually disappeared. [To be verified] if this icon still influences performance in 2025.

What are the unspoken limitations of this statement?

Mueller doesn't mention the maintenance cost of AMP. Maintaining two versions of the same page (classic + AMP) doubles the potential bug surface. Modern CMSs handle this automatically, but as soon as you customize, you create technical debt.

Another silence: the evolution of Core Web Vitals has significantly reduced the competitive advantage of AMP. A well-optimized page with lazy loading, critical CSS, and a high-performance server achieves equivalent LCP and CLS scores without the AMP constraints. I see more and more clients abandoning AMP after optimizing their classic stack.

In what cases is AMP still relevant today?

News sites obviously, this is the only case where ROI is measurable via access to the carousel. For them, it's almost essential to remain competitive in high-volume news queries.

Next, sites with limited or legacy technical infrastructure. If your CMS is from 2012 and optimizing it would take six months of development, AMP can be a quick fix to improve mobile. However, this admits a structural weakness, not a long-term strategy.

Should you still implement AMP on a new site in 2025?

For a news site, the answer is an unequivocal yes. The news carousel represents too significant a traffic source to forgo. First, ensure that Google recognizes you as a news source (via Google News Publisher Center).

For all other types of sites, invest instead in classic optimization. A good modern theme, a high-performing CDN, optimized WebP images, and a well-configured cache will yield equivalent or better results without the AMP constraints. Development resources are better spent on Core Web Vitals than on a second version of your pages.

How to manage a site that already uses AMP?

If your AMP pages are already in production and don't bring measurable value, there are two options. First, comparative audit: measure traffic, engagement, and conversions AMP vs classic. If the gap is negligible, plan a gradual phasing out.

Secondly, if you keep AMP, monitor content parity. Google sometimes indexes the AMP version as canonical even when you indicate otherwise. Check in Search Console which version is indexed for your key pages. Content discrepancies between the two versions can create ranking issues.

What errors should be avoided in the current AMP implementation?

The classic error: deploying AMP without measurable objectives. "We do AMP because Google recommends it" is not a strategy. Define precise KPIs: expected speed gain, impact on bounce rate, improvement of mobile SEO visibility score.

Another pitfall: neglecting the classic version in favor of AMP. Some sites have optimized their AMP so much that the standard page struggles. Google sometimes indexes this latter, resulting in poor UX signals. Optimize both versions or maintain only one properly.

• Audit your current AMP pages: traffic, conversions, revenue vs classic pages
• Check in Search Console which version (AMP or classic) Google is actually indexing
• For news sites, validate your eligibility for the carousel via Google News Publisher Center
• Test your Core Web Vitals on classic pages before deciding whether to keep or abandon AMP
• If you keep AMP, automate the verification of content parity between the two versions
• Measure the impact on advertising revenue if you monetize via display