Back in February, Google introduced AMP content in search results on mobile devices. These appeared in a new carousel that says “Top Stories” on mobile search results pages:
On Wednesday, Google announced it is doing the same thing across mobile platforms: web, Android, and iOS.
In a post on the Google News blog, Google News engineering director Maricia Scott explains, “So – what’s new? At the top of the page, there is a new AMP carousel filled with important headlines and stories of the day. Users can browse up to 14 headlines there quickly, and click any article to jump into the viewer, which is optimized for fast-loading AMP articles. In the viewer, people can also swipe to continue reading other stories from the carousel. Within the regular News stream, AMPlified articles are labelled with the AMP lightning bolt icon. That way, users can know these will be fast even before they click.”
“Our tests have shown that AMP documents load an average of four times faster and use 10 times less data than the equivalent non-amp’ed result. In many cases these stories will load instantly,” says Scott. “That adds up to a win for publishers and users. While we can’t expand the amount of time in the day, with AMP we can help users consume more content in the time they do have. It is also great for publishers because people will read more and click on more stories when they know they will load fast, driving more traffic to a publisher’s site.”
The update is for English in the U.S. for now. More languages and regions will roll out soon.
Images via Google, Wikimedia Commons
