Google AMP Makes It Easier To Discover & Share The Canonical URL

The big Google news yesterday was around the AMP team announcing that you can now easily discover, copy, and share the canonical URL of an AMP page, instead of sharing and copying the AMP URL which is often times on the google.com address and bugged way too many people.

Google explained that AMP pages, which we have on this site, use three different URLs:

• Original URL: The publisher’s document written in the AMP format

  http://www.example.com/amp/doc.html
  

• AMP Cache URL: The document served through an AMP Cache (e.g., all AMPs served by Google are served through the Google AMP Cache). Most users will never see this URL.

  https://www-example-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.example.com/amp/doc.html

• Google AMP Viewer URL: The document displayed in an AMP viewer (e.g., when rendered on the search result page).

  https://www.google.com/amp/www.example.com/amp.doc.html

Here is the breakdown visually of how Google now adds a little link icon to share the original URL or canonical URL:

Here is a GIF of it in action on this site:

So now, it is a bit easier to share the right URL - but I wonder how many will actually do that versus use the built in URL share feature?

Google did add that "in the coming weeks, the Android Google app will share the original URL of a document when users tap on the app’s share button. This functionality is already available on the iOS Google app."

Forum discussion at Google+, Twitter and Google Webmaster Help.