Healthcare digital marketing for your medical practice or hospital would soon involve adopting AMP web standards for your website, if Google’s latest developments take shape.
Google has announced that it is developing web standards to ensure that even non-AMP pages load quickly. It is applying the lessons learned from AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). When this standardization is completed, sites can implement AMP features without having to adopt the framework.
Low Adoption of AMP Framework Reason for this Development
AMP has been part of Google’s effort to improve the user’s web experience. The AMP framework was introduced in 2015. And, it has been actively promoted by Google and integrated into the publishing platforms. However, the AMP framework hasn’t quite been widely adopted, with AMP support across the web at below 0.1%, according to Search Engine Journal. It was considered as just a proprietary format though being open source.
But there have been significant advantages of AMP adoption experienced by the 0.1% of sites that adopted it. That gains have been felt in conversions, which usually come as one of the results of improved user experience. The markedly improved site performance is another major benefit. All of these have made Google take the AMP technologies and transform them to open web standards.
AMP Standards Google Aims to Incorporate
According to the announcement made by Google on March 8, 2018, the search engine giant wants to offer support to AMP-like content in features such as the carousel appearing in the Google SERPs called Top Stories. Google intends the support to satisfy some user experience and performance criteria while implementing some web standards. The proposed standards are:
- Feature Policy
- Web Packaging
- iFrame Promotion
- Performance Timeline
- Paint Timing
Crucial to these developments is the report on Chrome User Experience released by the Google Chrome team last year. The user experience and performance “real world measurements” in the report provide the vital data for Google to carry on with the AMP standardization.
Faster and More Efficient Web Experience the Ultimate Aim
According to Google’s post, getting the AMP features into the open web standards is in alignment with the search engine giant’s objective to provide a faster and better web experience. When these features get standardized, developers will be able to make use of them without having to incorporate the full AMP framework. These sites would also be able appear in the Google search Top Stories carousel.
The post says that the AMP lessons learned will be used to work on web standards so that non-AMP web content can load instantly. Other AMP-like features include the embedding capability enriching Google Search in features such as the Top Stories carousel.
Extensive Testing before Adoption
Search Engine Journal indicates there will be extensive testing before these innovations get rolled out through Google Search. The web standards need to provide satisfactory results for users before they are implemented. Other factors affecting the implementation, according to Google, would be how fast the browser implementation and standardization progress. As a result, the search engine giant cannot provide an exact timeline for launching these features outside of AMP.
With the competition in the healthcare sector, advanced medical website development offered by experienced healthcare digital marketing companies is essential for adopting AMP web standards.
