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In 2022 (as opposed to a few years ago, when Google was really prioritizing AMP in the SERPs), does it make sense to use AMP pages for a content-based site, but not news-based site (e.g. Google News is not relevant) if you can achieve all good core web vitals metrics without it?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by odeskavita

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Short take: this is a migration and ops decision more than a simple “SEO yes/no.” ’s move to 301 AMP -> canonical after enabling SXG matches what teams do when they want a single maintained codepath. and are right to focus on UX and page performance, but the follow-up question is how to retire AMP cleanly and what to watch for.

If retiring AMP, follow a short checklist (carry out in a staging environment first): implement 301 redirects from each AMP URL to its canonical non-AMP equivalent; ensure non-AMP pages contain the same structured data and visible content; remove rel="amphtml" links and any AMP-only tags; update sitemaps and CDNs; migrate analytics/ad tags and any AMP-specific event tracking; ask Google to re-crawl key pages via URL Inspection. A simple nginx example redirect (adjust to your URL scheme) is:

# redirect /some/path/amp or /some/path/amp/ -> /some/path
location ~ ^(.+)/amp/?$ {
  return 301 https://$host$1;
}

Signed Exchanges can reduce the need for AMP by letting Google cache and serve a publisher page while preserving the origin in the URL bar; browser support and operational complexity are non-trivial, so treat SXG as a tool, not a cure-all. See the SXG primer at web.dev/signed-exchanges for implementation details.

Monitor Search Console (Performance, Coverage, and the AMP report), PageSpeed Insights/Lighthouse, and CrUX before and after the cutover. Expect a recrawl period (weeks); if rankings dip, check redirect chains, response codes, canonical headers, and that structured data still validates. Keep AMP only if you have a strong business reason (partner requirements, large AMP-dependent ad stacks, or specific feature access) and maintain parity between the AMP and non-AMP versions while both exist. For general Page Experience guidance, see Google’s Page Experience docs.

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Member Avatar for AussieWebmaster

Google has stepped away from AMP moving more to its machine learning and PWA - but if it loads fast it will be fine for now - would keep monitoring what Google is doing for ranking algo - but speed is important purely for a UX

Member Avatar for Dani

I've taken the plunge and started redirecting all of my AMP pages to their non-AMP canonicals. We recently enabled SXG for the whole site, so that's what pushed me to not really see the benefit anymore.

Member Avatar for odeskavita

If you want to use AMP for the ranking factor, it is no longer required! Google has shifted its focus to Core Web Vitals. I personally feel that AMP gives Google too much control over the web. I was happy to know that when it comes to raking search results, Google has changed it from AMP to speed of web pages.

I advise giving your Core Web Vitals scores priority. Then, your pages will have the same chance of ranking highly as AMP-optimized ones as long as you follow those instructions. I used the following tricks to boost my scores:

  • Caching, image formats, and optimizing your website's code are common changes to boost Core Web Vitals. Because it examines the technical characteristics of a webpage, resolving such issues will surely improve your scores.
  • Share them with your developer (using tools like Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, and CrUX) to identify the aspects that are causing your site to fail. Then, resolve those aspects with the help of your developer and improve your scores.

To conclude, there is no need to AMP your web in 2022. Instead, focus on Core Web Vitals!

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