When it comes to mobile search, speed is a big deal. According to Google, 40% percent of people will give up on a web page if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

Google’s AMP project is designed to address that problem.

Greased lightning

Over the past few months, you may have noticed that when searching on your mobile, some Google results feature a little lightning bolt icon followed by ‘AMP’.

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Page. Similar to Facebook’s Instant Articles, AMP pages are optimised to load much more quickly on a mobile device than standard web pages.

Why AMP matters

On top of minimising drop-off associated with the three second rule, Google seems to be giving expanded exposure to AMP pages in mobile search results.

So, ensuring your page is AMP ready not only delivers a better experience for your mobile visitors, it may actually increase your sites’ mobile search visibility.

Get AMP-ed up

Pages that feature static content work best with AMP, so AMP may not be suitable for all pages or subpages.

However, you don’t have to AMP an entire website. It is possible to AMP only appropriate subpages within your site and still achieve mobile search benefits.   

Depending on the CMS your page uses, AMP-lifying it can be as easy as installing a plugin. Currently, WordPress, Drupal, Marfeel, Squarespace and Hatena are all supported (you can see a full list of supported platforms here).

If your page uses custom HTML, then it might need a little more work.

To learn more about how to AMP your website, be sure to visit Google’s Webmaster Central Blog.