Will AMPs Cause The Downfall Of Responsive Design?

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) are one-year-old, and have only been rolled out across all search engines since 20 September 2016. In this small amount of time, AMPs are fast becoming the favoured mobile web-page format.

Google AMPs have only been live in Google SERPs since February 2016. Within this small amount of time, a number of AMP publishers have reported large increases in traffic and click-through rate (CTR):

• A DoubleClick study stated that 90% of AMP publishers have received an increase in engagement and an increased click-through rate – with one publisher seeing a 600% increase in CTR after their page became an AMP.
• The Washington Post saw a 23% in returning mobile search users since they implemented the use of AMPs.
• Miami Herald visitors who reached the site through an Accelerated Mobile Page spent 10% more time on the site than those who arrived on regular non-AMP pages.
• Science and Technology news site, Wired, saw a 25% rise in CTR from SERPs, and a 63% increase in CTR from ads in AMP stories.

Google has specifically stated in the past that AMPs are not a ranking factor, and site positions will not be affected dependant on the number of AMPs it has. Although Google has not released an opinion on whether they prefer responsive design pages or AMPs, it has said that it will show AMP-enabled pages over other versions of the page.

Google is also letting AMPs overtake app deep links because users are “more likely to click on a result when it’s presented in AMP format versus non-AMP”.

Until Google releases official information on whether AMPs will take precedence over responsive design pages, we cannot be sure as to which format Google prefers.