In episode #491, Eric and Neil explain the purpose of Google’s AMP and why it may be killing your revenue. If you are an e-commerce business, this episode should be of particular interest to you. Tune in to discover how AMP is hurting your business.
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- [00:27] Today’s Topic: Google’s AMP Is Killing Your Revenue
- [00:35] Explaining the purpose of Google’s AMP.
- [01:13] When stripping down sites for mobile access, it strips away ads to get the sites to load more quickly.
- [01:30] Reasons why certain countries have different rates of search traffic.
- [02:30] Why your revenue will tank in spite of search traffic increases.
- [03:13] Even though Google says they are adding tools for publishers, take it with a grain of salt.
- [03:35] If you are an e-commerce business, it can be detrimental to use AMP.
- [03:48] That’s it for today!
- [03:50] Marketing School is giving away a 90-day free trial to Crazy Egg, which is a visual heat-mapping tool.
- [03:55] Go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway to get your free copy. You can also learn how to win a one-year subscription to Crazy Egg.
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The post Google’s AMP Is Killing Your Revenue | Ep. #491 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.
Full Transcript of The Episode
Announcer: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Sui.
Eric Sui: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sui.
Neil Patel: I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Sui: And today, we're going to talk about how Google's AMP is killing your revenue. First of all, what's AMP?
Neil Patel: Google AMP is their framework in which it allows your mobile pages to display extremely fast. It's more so for content based pages. So they take your blog post, they put it in their framework, or assuming you put it in their framework, and then when Google or people are searching on Google on a mobile device, it's pretty much a strip down version of your web page.
Eric Sui: Exactly. So think about this, right? You're going to be losing, especially if your site is driven by ad revenue. So let's look at Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times. Well, these sites are reporting up to 50% decrease in ad revenue, because here's the thing, these pages when they're a lot faster they have to strip away what? They have to strip away certain elements, so ads are getting stripped away, which means less revenue for people and, well, a lot of these sites are heavily focused on banner ads. So it just makes sense that revenue is getting taken away.
Neil Patel: And its funny, everyone always says if you use Google AMP's framework you get way more search traffic. I've done so many tests on this. I found that my search topic within the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, upper mobile, Australia, it hasn't been going up. But in markets like Brazil, Latin America, India, places like this, my mobile traffic from search has been going up from AMP and I've consistently seen that. And it could just be because the bandwidth or the speed in the United States, or the UK, or Australia, is quite fast already, so its not that big of a difference from a user experience. But in other markets like Latin America the load time increases so much you know you are seeing more search traffic.
So for AMP, depending the regions you're going after, it could be worth it if the traffic could make you more money even though the conversion drops. But in most cases, from what we're seeing is, yeah, you may get some traffic increases and it's not much. You're lucky if you're getting a 10% increase in search traffic overall. But your revenue in general is going to go down and is going to tank.
Eric Sui: Yep. And you also want to consider this too. I mean, Google is saying that they do have ad features that they're adding for publishers. But keep in mind, I mean, a lot of people aren't taking advantage of this yet. You know, Google's saying they're implementing this, but the fact of the matter is this. Google actually has a history for abandoning a lot of platforms in the past, right? You look at Google Plus, for example. What else do they have? They have like ... I think there's Google Buzz. What else did they abandon?
Neil Patel: There's a lot of stuff.
Eric Sui: A lot of different things.
Neil Patel: Yeah. Didn't they have like a phone number service that they had too?
Eric Sui: Yeah. They're just not reliable when it comes to all these different platforms. So just keep that in mind. You want to make sure that ultimately at the end of the day you're controlling your own destiny. So when you put it into their hands, I mean, you could be risking a lot. And, even though they're saying they are adding a bunch of tools for ads, you know, for publishers in the future, you want to take that with a grain of salt. At least I would.
Neil Patel: Yeah. In general, I use AMP. But for me, cause I'm in Beta B, mobile doesn't really convert in the first place. And it's not like it's a big revenue driver. So I never really cared in the first place for mobile visitors. I'm not saying they're bad, they just don't really make me much money.
On the flip side, if you are e-commerce, and you have a blog or a section that drives a lot of traffic from mobile that could be turned into AMP type of pages, well, you can lose a lot of revenue if you just switch over to them. So be careful.
Eric Sui: Great. That's it for today. But before we go, we have a 90-day free trial of Crazy Egg, which is a heat mapping tool that will help you make more money. All you need to do is go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to get your copy. And you can also win a one-year annual subscription to Crazy Egg. That's it for today. And we will see you tomorrow.
Announcer: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.
Eric Sui: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sui.
Neil Patel: I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Sui: And today, we're going to talk about how Google's AMP is killing your revenue. First of all, what's AMP?
Neil Patel: Google AMP is their framework in which it allows your mobile pages to display extremely fast. It's more so for content based pages. So they take your blog post, they put it in their framework, or assuming you put it in their framework, and then when Google or people are searching on Google on a mobile device, it's pretty much a strip down version of your web page.
Eric Sui: Exactly. So think about this, right? You're going to be losing, especially if your site is driven by ad revenue. So let's look at Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times. Well, these sites are reporting up to 50% decrease in ad revenue, because here's the thing, these pages when they're a lot faster they have to strip away what? They have to strip away certain elements, so ads are getting stripped away, which means less revenue for people and, well, a lot of these sites are heavily focused on banner ads. So it just makes sense that revenue is getting taken away.
Neil Patel: And its funny, everyone always says if you use Google AMP's framework you get way more search traffic. I've done so many tests on this. I found that my search topic within the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, upper mobile, Australia, it hasn't been going up. But in markets like Brazil, Latin America, India, places like this, my mobile traffic from search has been going up from AMP and I've consistently seen that. And it could just be because the bandwidth or the speed in the United States, or the UK, or Australia, is quite fast already, so its not that big of a difference from a user experience. But in other markets like Latin America the load time increases so much you know you are seeing more search traffic.
So for AMP, depending the regions you're going after, it could be worth it if the traffic could make you more money even though the conversion drops. But in most cases, from what we're seeing is, yeah, you may get some traffic increases and it's not much. You're lucky if you're getting a 10% increase in search traffic overall. But your revenue in general is going to go down and is going to tank.
Eric Sui: Yep. And you also want to consider this too. I mean, Google is saying that they do have ad features that they're adding for publishers. But keep in mind, I mean, a lot of people aren't taking advantage of this yet. You know, Google's saying they're implementing this, but the fact of the matter is this. Google actually has a history for abandoning a lot of platforms in the past, right? You look at Google Plus, for example. What else do they have? They have like ... I think there's Google Buzz. What else did they abandon?
Neil Patel: There's a lot of stuff.
Eric Sui: A lot of different things.
Neil Patel: Yeah. Didn't they have like a phone number service that they had too?
Eric Sui: Yeah. They're just not reliable when it comes to all these different platforms. So just keep that in mind. You want to make sure that ultimately at the end of the day you're controlling your own destiny. So when you put it into their hands, I mean, you could be risking a lot. And, even though they're saying they are adding a bunch of tools for ads, you know, for publishers in the future, you want to take that with a grain of salt. At least I would.
Neil Patel: Yeah. In general, I use AMP. But for me, cause I'm in Beta B, mobile doesn't really convert in the first place. And it's not like it's a big revenue driver. So I never really cared in the first place for mobile visitors. I'm not saying they're bad, they just don't really make me much money.
On the flip side, if you are e-commerce, and you have a blog or a section that drives a lot of traffic from mobile that could be turned into AMP type of pages, well, you can lose a lot of revenue if you just switch over to them. So be careful.
Eric Sui: Great. That's it for today. But before we go, we have a 90-day free trial of Crazy Egg, which is a heat mapping tool that will help you make more money. All you need to do is go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to get your copy. And you can also win a one-year annual subscription to Crazy Egg. That's it for today. And we will see you tomorrow.
Announcer: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.
