Perhaps your developer set up AMP a few years ago because “Google wants it”. Perhaps an SEO plugin offers to switch it on with one tick. Or perhaps you have noticed that some URLs on your site end in /amp/, that they look slightly different from your real pages, that the contact form does not work on them, and nobody can remember why they exist.
Is AMP still worth it? For most small business websites, no. It was a reasonable answer to a real problem, and that problem is now better solved on your normal pages. But “switch it off” is not quite the whole answer either, because removing AMP carelessly can leave broken links behind. What follows covers what AMP was for, what changed, when keeping it might still make sense, and how to remove it cleanly if you decide to.
What AMP was built to do
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is an open-source framework for building web pages, started by Google with news publishers in mind. News articles on phones were often painfully slow then, weighed down by ads and scripts. AMP’s approach was to restrict what a page could contain: very limited custom JavaScript, a set of pre-built components for things like images, carousels and forms, and limits on styling. Pages built within those rules were predictable and quick to render.
Google Search then gave AMP pages special treatment. They could be served from Google’s own AMP cache and were marked with a small lightning-bolt badge in results. And until 2021, a news article generally needed an AMP version to appear in the Top Stories carousel on mobile. That requirement is why many news sites, and plenty of ordinary business blogs following their lead, adopted it.
What changed
When Google rolled out its page experience update in 2021, it changed two things that had been the main reasons to use AMP. Non-AMP pages became eligible for Top Stories, and the AMP badge was removed from search results. Page experience is now judged through Core Web Vitals and Google’s other signals, whatever framework built the page. Those measurements are explained in what Core Web Vitals are and how they are measured.
AMP pages can still appear in results. What has gone is the special advantage. A fast normal page and a fast AMP page are now in the same position, and a normal page is the one your visitors and your team are actually used to.
Browsers and tools moved on as well. Modern image formats, native lazy loading, better caching plugins and CDNs make it possible to get a normal page fast without AMP’s restrictions. The work involved is laid out in our making a website faster guide.
Is AMP still worth it for a small business site?
Think about what AMP pages for small business sites usually look like in practice. The site has a normal version of every page and a second, AMP version of its blog posts or sometimes every page. That second version has a cost, even if nobody sees it on an invoice.
Two versions to keep working
Every change to the design, the header, the footer or a call to action has to work in both versions. In practice the AMP version is forgotten, so visitors arriving on it see an older, plainer page with missing elements.
Forms, chat and tracking
Because AMP restricts JavaScript, ordinary form plugins, chat widgets, booking tools and many tracking tags do not work on AMP pages without a separate AMP-specific setup. That often means enquiries cannot be made from the very pages people land on, or conversions are not counted.
Plugin compatibility
On WordPress, AMP is usually provided by a plugin that generates the AMP version from your content. Other plugins that add content or features to pages may not support it, and the combination can break after updates.
Confusing reports
Analytics, Search Console and speed tests now report on two sets of URLs. Problems on the AMP version show up in their own reports and are easy to overlook.
For most small businesses, the benefit that once justified all this no longer exists, so the cost is not worth carrying.
When keeping AMP can still make sense
There are a few situations where it is reasonable not to rush:
- Your whole site is built in AMP, not as a second version but as the only version, it works well, forms and tracking are set up for it, and you are happy with it. There is no urgent reason to rebuild something that functions.
- You publish news and the AMP setup is mature, with ads, analytics and subscriptions all configured, and your non-AMP pages are not yet fast. Make the normal pages fast first, then retire AMP.
- A redesign is already planned. Removing AMP as part of the redesign avoids doing redirect work twice.
What does not make sense is adding AMP now to a small business site in the hope of a ranking advantage. That advantage was removed years ago.
How to remove AMP without losing visitors
The risk in removing AMP is not speed. It is links. AMP URLs may be shared on social media, saved in bookmarks or still listed in Google. If they suddenly return “page not found”, those visitors are lost. Work through this in order:
- Check your normal pages first. Test a few key pages on mobile. If they are slow, fix that before removing the AMP versions, otherwise visitors lose a fast page and gain a slow one.
- List the AMP URLs. Search Console has an AMP report if Google knows about them, and you can see their pattern on the site: often
/amp/at the end, or?amp=1. - Plan redirects. Each AMP URL should redirect permanently to its normal page. A redirect rule or redirect plugin can usually match the pattern in one go. Our post on fixing 404 errors with redirects covers the method.
- Turn off AMP generation and make sure the normal pages no longer point to an AMP version in their code.
- Test the redirects with several old AMP URLs, including posts and pages, and check they land on the right page, not the homepage.
- Watch Search Console over the following weeks. The AMP report should empty out over time, and any rise in “not found” errors points to URLs the redirect rule missed.
Two practical notes. Leave the redirect rules in place permanently; old AMP links can keep arriving from social posts and other sites for years, and the rules cost almost nothing to keep. And if your analytics had separate tracking for AMP pages, remove that configuration once the AMP versions are gone, so it does not confuse future reports or leave dead tags behind in your tag manager.
What to do instead of AMP
The things AMP enforced are worth keeping as habits on your normal pages: light pages, few scripts, images sized for their space, nothing that shifts the layout, fast server responses. Concretely:
- Use page caching and a reasonable host so the HTML arrives quickly.
- Resize and compress images, and let the first large picture a visitor sees load straight away rather than lazily.
- Remove scripts you do not use and delay the ones that are not needed straight away.
- Keep fonts to a small number of families and weights.
- Make sure the page works properly on a small screen; see how to make a website mobile friendly.
If AMP was originally set up for ad landing pages, the same principle applies there: a lean, normal page is easier to keep tracking working on. The details are in our post on landing page speed for ads. And if you are weighing up whether the speed work is worth the money at all, how slow pages affect enquiries explains how to judge that on your own site.
Frequently asked questions
Will removing AMP hurt my Google rankings?
Not by itself, if it is done properly. Google no longer gives AMP pages a special advantage, so what matters is that each old AMP URL redirects to a normal page that loads well and has the same content. Rankings are more at risk from broken links or slow replacement pages than from AMP’s absence.
Do I need AMP to appear in Google’s Top Stories?
No. Since the 2021 page experience update, non-AMP pages have been eligible for Top Stories. Appearing there depends on Google’s news content policies and how relevant and timely the article is, not on the framework used to build the page.
My SEO plugin offers an AMP option. Should I turn it on?
For most small business sites, leave it off. It adds a second version of your pages to maintain, and forms, chat and tracking may not work on those versions without extra setup. Making your normal pages fast gives visitors a better result with less to look after.
Why do my AMP pages look different from the rest of my site?
AMP pages are usually generated separately from your theme, with simplified styling and without the scripts your normal pages use. Menus, buttons, forms and widgets often do not carry across, which is why AMP versions tend to look plainer and fall out of date as the main site changes.
Retiring AMP works best once your normal pages are quick on a phone. If they are not yet, our website speed optimisation service can audit them and work through the fixes with you in order of impact, so the pages visitors land on after the redirects are worth landing on.
Next in this series: Website Performance Budget: Limits That Keep Pages Fast
