AMP URLs will soon drop the ‘google.com/amp’ prefix and show the full address of the original publisher.
The URLs of all AMPs in Google search begin with ‘google.com/amp’ because the pages are not loaded from the publisher’s server, they’re loaded from the Google AMP Cache. This allows Google to control the AMP experience and ensure the pages stay consistently fast.
Publishers have long been at odds with the Google prefix— it’s the number one piece of feedback Google hears about AMP. Google has issued a fix in its Search app that causes AMP URLs to default to publisher URLs. Now it’s issuing a similar fix for mobile web browsers.
Google explains the technical details of its solution:
“As recommended by the W3C TAG, we intend to implement a new version of AMP Cache serving based on the emerging Web Packaging standard.”
The new web standard will allow publisher URLs to remain intact on accelerated mobile pages, while still taking advantage of the speed of Google’s servers.
”We have built a prototype based on the Chrome Browser and an experimental version of Google Search to make sure it actually does deliver on both the desired UX and performance in real use cases.”
Google’s next step is to get the new web standard fully implemented in web browsers and the Google AMP Cache. The changes should be in place by the second half of 2018.
