Earlier this week, we reported that Google was potentially testing dropping the AMP logo from AMP powered mobile pages in the mobile Google search results. Well, since then, I've been seeing random reports of Google not just dropping the logo, but also not linking to the AMP page, when it is both available, properly canonicalized and linking all correctly.
Watch this video of it in action from Sergey:
I see pages that have AMP opening without AMP now (not just the icon dropped in this case). test or bug? cc: @rustybrick @JohnMu @jenstar pic.twitter.com/mmzqFhsoKN
— Sergey Alakov (@sergey_alakov) April 27, 2017
This is the same result, in a different browser, which kind of implies a bucket test on the other one, showing AMP working properly in the mobile results:
.@rustybrick @JohnMu @jenstar here is the same page with AMP pic.twitter.com/QvbukK62OU
— Sergey Alakov (@sergey_alakov) April 27, 2017
The SEO tool RankRanger also spotted this after I covered it originally and told me it was more than just the logo drop too. They posted on Twitter that "Google is showing less AMP results," adding that even when it "appears at times to show non-AMP version of certain pages despite availability." They then shared their tool showing a significant drop in AMP pages showing up:
RankRanger pulled some code from their sample and showed how the AMP canonical is there but Google in this test is not recognizing it:
What is interesting is that when I asked Google about it earlier this week, they kind of made me feel like I was off base here. They said "as you know we do tens of thousands of experiments in search every year but there are no such plans at this moment to change anything. The logo tells users that the page they will open will do so reliably and consistently fast."
Gary Illyes also:
@LWilson1980 Err... No, why?
— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) April 25, 2017
Well, something is up. Either it is a bug or a test but something is up.
