Twitter rolls back AMP support, no longer sends users to AMP pages

Jason November 18, 2021 0 Comments

If you are noticing less traffic to your website’s AMP pages coming from Twitter, turns out there is a reason for that: Twitter has subtly updated its AMP guidelines page on its Developer site to say support for AMP will be phased out by the fourth quarter.

How that might affect you. Previously, if a mobile user clicked on a link to your site, Twitter would redirect them to the AMP version of that page if an AMP version was available. Now, that won’t happen and users will just load the native mobile/responsive version of your content.

Thanks for telling us. We’ve heard anecdotally that publishers have been seeing AMP traffic fall, especially since Google started putting non-AMP pages in its Top Stories section. But it was David Esteve, audience development specialist and product manager at Marfeel, and technical SEO consultant Christian Oliveira who spotted the update in Twitter’s documentation.

Looking at our own data, we’ve seen sharp Twitter referral declines since August. But, traffic completely bottomed out in November suggesting the rollout is complete.

Twitter referrals to Search Engine Land AMP pages in 2021.

We’ve seen similar declines in LinkedIn referrals to AMP pages and have reached out to the company to find out if it is also dropping support. We will update this post when we get a definitive answer.

Why we care. Since Google announced AMP will no longer be required for Top Stories, many publishers have been asking themselves if continuing to support AMP is still worth it. The main worry has been the risk of traffic loss if publishers rely fully on their native mobile experiences for ranking. But, if social media traffic to AMP pages is going to drop as support is lifted, the need for AMP seems to get smaller.

The post Twitter rolls back AMP support, no longer sends users to AMP pages appeared first on Search Engine Land.

AboutJason Richardson

Jason specializes in digital marketing strategies and founded a digital marketing agency Richardson Digital Media™. Richardson Digital Media™ has quickly become a preferred marketing provider for real estate companies and nationwide mortgage lenders. Jason has won 9 President’s Circle of Excellence Awards for loan production over his career and was most recently honored as one of National Mortgage Professional Magazine’s “40 Under 40: The 40 Most Influential Mortgage Professionals.”